Technology: Backing Up Your Computer

Shockingly, I realized something recently: I'm not backing up my computer.

(Wait for laughter)

Seriously... me... the guy who is probably the most conservative when it comes to life's most important decisions. In my defense, I actually thought it didn't matter because I have two 160 GB hard drives that serve as a RAID. In essence, these drives were mirroring each other. While it sounded fine (and safe) to me that the computer was being backed up, one of my colleagues pointed out that it would be catastrophic if my computer actually crashed.

Think about it: What do you store on your computer? Well, for me, I have TONS of pictures dating back to 2004. These are very important to me. I've captured most of my life in pictures and displayed them on my website for the benefit of my friends and family. If I was to lose all of that... well, in a word, it would truly be "catastrophic!"

Brian mentioned something he uses called Mozy. For $4.95 a month, you can purchase this service to back up your entire computer. It will store all of your files on their server, and it encrypts the files so that they are safe from hackers.

The process begins immediately after you purchase - the monthly fee is encompassed when you make a 1-time payment for the year (or beyond). It will begin to scan your computer and start backing up everything. The initial backup takes about 3 days, but after that it will only backup the files it knows changed each day (or files that were added). And you can schedule it to backup whenever you want (automatically).

Anyway, I thought I'd pass along this bit of info.