Almost each week I get an email from an “Update” subscriber saying something like: “Ian, my hard drives crashed and I lost everything. Can you please let me download again X Y Z” - with X, Y and Z being stuff they’d got from me. It happens. It’s happened to me a couple of times. And if it hasn’t happened to you yet, believe me, it will!

Now computers and hard drives are replaceable. Files (important documents, software, eBooks, emails etc.) are not. You can’t replace them - unless you have a reliable backup system in place.

My livelihood depends on my computers and the data stored on them. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of backup systems, but I’ve not felt really safe until a year ago, I started to use an online backup system. In the middle of the night (I leave my PC on continuously), any files that I’ve changed in the folders I’ve selected to be backed up are uploaded to a remote system. I sleep easy at night

However - there had to be a “however”, didn’t there! - it’s not cheap. I’m paying 34 UK Pounds (70 USD) per month for this service. And I can still only backup 25 Gb of data. It’s not enough. I’ve got another 20 Gb of files in my eLibrary (all the goodies I’ve downloaded over the years) and another 10 Gb of software that I’ve installed. I wasn’t prepared to fork out even more cash to more than double my backup storage space.

A few days ago, my son-in-law, Gavin, pointed out an article in the “PC Plus” magazine reviewing an online backup service which gave unlimited backup storage for just 50 bucks a year.

I’ve been burnt in the past by these “too good to be true” off’ers, so I researched the company. It looks very good. Everywhere I looked it had rave reviews - even from the “New York Times”. So I took up the off’er of a 15-day free trial, and everything is going very smoothly. As I write, my massive eLibrary is being backed up automatically, and I’ve also tested the “restore” function. It’s critical that you test this with any online backup service.

So if your PC data is important to you, this is one backup service I endorse. You can get your 15-day trial here:

http://www.IanSays.com/OnlineBackup

If you want to ask me anything else about the service, please ask. I’ll be happy to tell you.

And, a final note - I’ll probably be ditching my more expensive service (”ClunkClick”, a UK-based company) in the near future!