Better than a shoebox

Computers are wonderful. It is really amazing what you can do easily at home that just a few years ago required hiring a printer or hours in a darkroom. Especially with photography. I love being able to take an unlimited number of pictures and then fix the pictures at leisure. It's very liberating.

Of course, all of this technology has a dark side.

All of the pictures and other data on your computer are actually little magnetic charges stuck to a platter spinning at 7,200 rpm with a big sharp metal arm that comes really close to the surface. For some reason, when you double-click on a file name, this metal arm zips over to the right area of the platter, reads the charges, sends the values to the processor, which then converts it all into a cute photo of your kids, dog, or girlfriend wife.

We trust this system to keep our treasured memories? What if the arm slips and scratches the disk? What if someone in Buffalo, New York, blows a fuse and creates a chain reaction failure through our nationwide power grid that sends a power spike like an electronic tsunami up into the delicate electronic components of your precious computer? What if your child jams peanut butter sandwich into your DVD drive? The possibilities are terrifying.

But seriously, the data on your computer is fragile and needs to be backed up. Here are the main risks to your data.

• your hard drive could crash
• power spikes
  
• your computer could be stolen
• your house could burn down

Each of these dangers poses unique challenges in saving your data. Here are a few of the options available to you in keeping your data safe.

Do nothing. This will work just fine for a lot of people, the odds are decent that nothing will ever happen to your computer. If you're OK with this, you should go and cancel your homeowner's and auto insurance.

Make CD/DVD/tape backups. This is a common solution for people, and it can work well. Some issues with it are that you have to remember to make the backup, DVDs only hold like 9 GB, so you may need multiple disks for a full backup, and you need to store them away from your house (like at a safe deposit box or your mom's house). This is not a good option for me because it is awkward, and I'll forget to do it. If you are able to consistently make backups and get them out of your house, you have avoided all the risks outlined above.

External hard drive.This is a great option. You can buy a 160 GB external hard drive for $70 after rebates. This is cheap and allows for an easy, automatic backup copy of your data. I have a 150 GB version that I bought a year or so ago that I really like. However, it can't guard against theft, or power spikes, or house fires.

Remote storage. This is a new option that I've recently discovered. You pay for a service to backup your data remotely. For $5 per month, you can use a service like Mozy.com to have unlimited secure data storage. (They offer 2 GB of free storage.) It integrates with the OS, so it looks like a drive in the windows explorer, and backs up the folders you select when your computer is idle. I just signed up a week or so ago, and it took a good 7 days for it to upload my 25 GB of pictures and music to their servers. Now it only checks for changes and can complete a backup in minutes. I've been playing with deleting and restoring files and it works great! It is a nice feeling to have everything safe and secure. If your computer crashes, you can access your files from any website and download the files for restoration.

There are still a couple of worries with a service like this- They could potentially access your files, so you shouldn't backup really sensitive information to their servers. I personally don't care if some Mozy software dude accesses my Bear Lake vacation photos. Another risk is that they go out of business and shut down the site. For this reason, you should still keep copies of your important files on your local hard drive. If they do go out of business, you'll only lose the time you used in setting up the service.

You will need some sort of high-speed internet service to make this useful- dial-up would be impractical.

I know it can be complicated, but remember, a shoebox full of pictures isn't really safe, either!