One of the problems with technology is that we rely on it more and more.  We store our precious memories, our financial/business records, and the fruits of our labors.  Who keeps a written address book anymore?  Does anyone besides a professional use a film camera these days?  How much have you spent on downloaded music?  Computers are intertwined with our lives.

Unfortunately, most people don’t realize just how much we rely on technology until it fails.  And, when it fails, it can mean losing big if it’s not properly backed up.

Some of you will have a separate hard drive or flash drive for backing up your most important things and actually perform a backup regularly.  Congratulations, you’re ahead of a huge percentage of the population.  But is that backed-up data protected as well?  If there were a fire or flood in your home, would that hard drive or flash drive be in a fire-proof and water-proof safe?  Or, are they sitting next to each other, so that a thief could steal both at the same time?  If you don’t take precautions to protect your backup, you could lose both your primary and secondary data sources.

A few months ago we tried an unlimited backup service called Mozy.  Mozy is a service that keeps your backup safe for you.  The process is simple, and requires the installation of the Mozy software.  The first thing Mozy will do is take a complete backup of the information you wish to keep safe.  You can save just your photos, music and financial information, or you can save the entire contents of your hard drive.  Remember, it’s unlimited.  The first backup will take a while.  Ours took about 2 days, and it will vary based on your internet speed and how much data you want to save:

“For a typical system on a typical broadband line — assuming you continue working on your computer during the backup — Mozy backs up data at the rate of about 2-4 GB per day. If left undisturbed on a fast connection, however, you can back up over 9 GB in a single day.”

However, this is a one-time process, and it works in the background so you can keep working.  After the first full backup, Mozy will perform regular, incremental backups, which means they will only process the information that has changed–new, modified, deleted, etc. and the incremental backup will take much less time.

Mozy is affordable. In fact, you can backup up to 2GB of data absolutely free.  The home subscription is $4.95/month per computer.  If you’ve ever had to recover your entire life from a dead laptop (I have), you know that this service is worth considerably more than $4.95.  Additional discounts are available for 1- and 2-year subscriptions.

But what about security?  Will my data be safe?

“Absolutely. MozyHome gives you the ability to select your data’s encryption method: a MozyHome key with 448-bit Blowfish encryption or your own personal key with 256-bit AES encryption. Your files are encrypted on your computer using the key of your choice and then transferred to the Mozy servers using 128-bit SSL encryption, the industry standard for safe and secure data transfer.”

Try Mozy.  What have you got to lose?

Use Code: JULY for 10% off annual and biennial services until July 30, 2010

This is not a paid endorsement, though I am a Mozy.com affiliate and may receive a referral bonus for your subscription.