Quote from: whiteswan on December 21, 2012, 06:46:16 PM
Great news, I've only lost all my data once and ever since then have made sure I've got at least one backup somewhere.

Somewhere?
Don't you know where they are?

A friend who works on file systems always told me there were three kinds of people

- those who don't make backups and haven't lost everything *yet*

- those who make backups and haven't had a backup fail to restore *yet*

- those who also verify their backups

Alan

Hi all, could I offer some information for all who use computers.

There are a number of companies that offer online backups. Most offer 5GB free and then charge if you want more.
You can find some good information here on the Money Saving Expert website.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/free-online-storage

The way most of these programs work is that in the original setup, you select which folders the program is to "watch". The folders you select are then uloaded to the cloud.

After that first backup, most of these programs then sit in the background and "watch" for any changes you make. Only the files that have changed are then added to the backup automatically.
.
Some of these backup solutions also keep previous versions of files for up to 30 days.

The first backup can take a long time - for my publishing business, the first backup was over 70GB and took a week with the computer on all the time but now the backups take seconds and don't slow the computer at all

I have used Carbonite for my business for at least 5 years and even  if you need more space than the free amount, I think it's only $59 (about £40) a year for unlimited storage.