The question about computers is not whether they will fail, but when they will fail. Over time every computer dies. Over the many years I have been utilizing computers I have had several hard drives fail. When this occurs one can lose hundreds of hours of work - letters, documents, emails. Until recently the only way to prevent this from happening was a time consuming process using CD's. Some people would setup an external hard drive. Still, this left a significant gap in protection. Usually both devices where kept in the same location (house, apartment, business) and if this location caught fire, flooded, or was robbed there was still a significant danger that the data would be permanently lost.

    Now backups are no longer a issue with Mozy. Mozy is a small program that runs on your computer and sends encrypted copies of your files up to a centralized server at an offsite location. There are many programs attempting to fill this need, but Mozy is the best I have found. Not to mention that Mozy is free for personal use up to 2 gigabytes (which is thousands of documents). One can also get unlimited personal backup for $4.95/mo. A very reasonable price for individuals with large collections of important files on their computer.

    Mozy also offers a Pro line which is reasonably priced for home and small businesses. Its $3.95/mo. for a baseline fee and than $0.50 a gigabyte (GB).

    Mozy's free and reasonably priced nature isn't all that differentiates it. One is able to select exactly which files one wants backed up and have these backed up continuously. Mozy watches for changes to the files and automatically backs up the changes. Mozy is also popular because of its use of incremental and versioned backups. An incremental means that only the parts of the document that have changed are uploaded, rather than uploading the entire file every time. Versioning is where it keeps multiple copies of the file. That way if you accidently overwrite an important file you can look back at previous versions through the Mozy interface.

   There is no excuse not to have this software. It takes fifteen minutes to download, install, and configure. But it will save you hundreds of hours in the long-term - and for individual users, you can't argue with the price (free)!