I’m a bit of a crazy person, always concerned about losing my data. Hard drive crashes in the past have been a source of great consternation. I keep meaning to get some sort of backup solution, an external drive with automatic backups or something, but I have yet to do it. Largely, I’m lazy. Also, a backup solution like that requires that I remember to do it regularly.

But then what about theft, or fire? I’ve often thought to myself that in the event of a fire, I would have to grab my computer tower on my way out. If I had an external drive it would be easier to grab, but saving my own life is important and stopping to grab anything is kind of retarded.

The solution?

Mozy online backups, to backup your files. They have a free service which allows up to 2 GB of backup or an unlimited service for $5 per month. Joe’s been using it and pointed me in their direction.

Concerned about storing your files off-site, or about transmitting them over the internets? No problem, it’s all encrypted on your machine before it’s transmitted: 128-bit SSL support before transmission and then 448-bit Blowfish encryption to secure it for storage on their servers.

The Mozy client is pretty slick, too. It searches for things that most people would want backed up and then you can select (very easily via check boxes) which of those things to backup. De-selecting my music, pictures and videos got me down under the 2 GB limit. That backed up all my actual documents, Outlook settings, contacts and mail as well Internet Explorer and Firefox favorites and settings.

After trying out their free service, I signed up for the unlimited one so I can back up all my photos. The real trouble is that it takes a while to upload everything to their servers. Backing up my 14 GB of photos is going to take some time. The nice thing is that Mozy performs differential backups. That is to say that once you do your initial upload of all the files you want to back up, all future backups are much faster: The application simply detects which files have changed or been added and only uploads those.

As I said, I’m pretty pleased with the application.