by Michael Muchmore

Where’s the best place to keep your backed-up data? Somewhere far, far away. These online services will keep your data safe no matter what sort of disaster strikes your local PCs.

Local backup to external or optical drives is an excellent practice, but it can’t always protect your precious data. Just ask director Francis Ford Coppola. Last September, thieves stole not only his computers but also his backup device. The director lost 15 years of computer records, from writings to family photographs. Similarly, if there’s a fire or flood or tsunami where you keep your computers and PCs, you too can say good-bye to all those digital photographs, your music collection, and anything else you’ve backed up locally—even if you’re smart enough to backup to another on-site device, like a hard-drive or NAS. You can, of course, store a hard drive in a safe-deposit box, but that’s a hassle, and chances are you won’t update it monthly, let alone daily—and certainly not every time you update a file. If you want near-real time off-site backup, an online backup service is the way to go.

The services are inexpensive (typically about $5 a month), and the best ones won’t …

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