Sharing Know How

Do you backup the important files on your home computer to a external USB drive? or to DVDs?  or at all?  

Until just recently, I backed up my files to an old external USB drive every once in a while.  Which roughly translates to about two to three times per year.  Yesterday, I stumbled upon a free (yes, I said free!!) online backup service that gives you 2GB of online backup storage space for your home computer.  I decided to try it out and see if I could improve my already incredibly “bad” backup routine. 

I went on their website and signed up for an account (2 minutes).  Downloaded the software. (6 minutes) Installed the software and used all the recommended settings. (4 minutes)  So, after 12 minutes of dead easy setup, I was backing up my computer.  The total size of all my documents, pictures, videos, e-mail and miscellaneous files was 1.6GB.  This leaves me about 400 MB of room to grow, or I can finally get around to deleting all those files I really don’t need!  The 1.6 GB took about 12 hours to get backed up and completed overnight while I was sleeping.  Future backup will only take a few minutes since they only backup the changed data on your computer.  And the best part is, the software will take care of scheduling the backups.  This will allow me to concentrate by forgetfulness on other things.

Overall, a great service at a fantastic price of Free!!  But if you outgrow the 2GB, you will have to upgrade and pay for their unlimited home backup service.  The cost is only $5 per month for unlimited space.  Yes unlimited is correct.  You can have Terabytes of data (which would be a crazy amount for a home computer!), and it won’t cost you a penny more.

Want the free online home backup service?  Click here to go to the Mozy Home page.  You will need to click on Mozy Home at the top of the page, and then you should see a link to Mozy Home Free on the left side of the page. 

I thought I would do a quick follow up post regarding the last and most important point in my recent Here are 6 different ways to properly dispose of your old computer post.  I talked about making sure that you format your hard drive before selling, giving away or properly disposing of your old computer. 

Formatting your hard drive may sound like a very intimdating thing to do, especially if you don’t consider yourself “computer savvy”.  I was going to write up a blog post about the different ways to format your hard drive, but I came across a great blog post that expains the process better than I could.  Robin Harris has a great blog over at ZDNet and recently wrote about How to REALLY erase a hard drive.  He first explains the process of formatting a hard drive and then provides a link to a free utility to get the job done. He also explains in detail how to use the Free Secure Erase Utility software.  It is a great link to bookmark or print the page and save it for when you need it.