Here’s a service that can take the pain out of data backups for you

As writers, we create magic. But in the final analysis, that "magic" is simply data stored on our computers' hard drives. If the hard drive goes, the data goes, too -- unless you have good backups.

I've posted in recent days about my loss of website data. But even more frightening were those times when I lost data OFFline, i.e., when I've had hard disk crashes. It's happened to me twice. Both times I had, regrettibly, only old, incomplete backups. I had to scrounge around the house to find the few diskettes and CDs with backup data. I was several days recovering my hard drive the first time; several weeks the second time. You'd think I would have learned, but ...

Anyway, I just found out about a very practical, very affordable backup option if you don't want to hassle and you don't want to fill up a drawer/cabinet/desk/safe with CDs and DVDs. Take a look at IBackup, the place you need for online storage.

The beauty of this service is that it starts very cheaply at about $10 a month for 5 gigabytes of storage -- and it integrates so fully with your computer desktop that you can simply drag-and-drop files into storage. That's right. You don't need to maneuver around the Internet. Once you've installed their desktop, your online storage appears as though it were a disk drive in your computer. And, of course, they compress the data to give you great storage and recovery speed, and store it with safeguards to your privacy and data security.

Go to the IBackup website and look around for yourself. They explain the whole thing much better than I can and you can get all the details you need.

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