Ever since I’ve lost all my work to a computer failure way back in the 1990’s, I’ve been careful about backing up my files. It is a pain to remember to do this; it’s much better to get an automated solution that just backs up your files without you having to think about it.
Over the years I’ve used different programs for this, including SecondCopy, FolderShare, and JungleDisk, but now I finally hit upon that best of them all: Dropbox.
This nifty little piece of software is absolutely free. It installs on your PC in a few seconds. It creates a folder on your hard drive called “My Dropbox”. Everything in that folder is instantly backed up to your private “drop box” on the Internet.
In addition, it stores previous versions of your files. So if you were working on an article, and you made some accidental changes, you can retrieve the old file with a few clicks. I just saved my bacon the other day with this function.
Best of all, if you have more than 1 PC, you can install it on all of them, and your Dropbox folder will be synced. That means they all will contain the same files, all the time. Update a document on one PC, and presto! it appears on the other one. This is the single most useful thing about the software for me, since I alternate between my home PC, my work PC, and my spouse’s PC, and now I don’t have to carry or email my files around: they’re always right where they belong.
Dropbox gives you 2 GB of free space (you can pay them for more space if you need it). If you decide to sign up, please use the following link; you (and I) will get a bonus of 250MB extra space.