For reasons most easily described as paranoia, I am a huge fan of offsite file storage. For those of you who are not technically savvy (not that there’s anything wrong with that), this means that your computer data is backed up onto servers that physically exist somewhere outside of your residence. Thus, in the event of any disaster, be it a hard drive failure or a cataclysmic house fire, your data will be safe and able to be retrieved.

I find this especially appealing considering my entire CD collection, DVD collection, photo album, etc are stored on my PC. I’ve recently come across an excellent service/program that has the best offsite storage tools I’ve ever run across. It’s called Mozy, and I’ve been using it for a couple of months now. A few of the key features that really set this tool apart from its competitors (and believe me, there are a lot of competitors) are as follows:

• Incremental backups: Mozy intelligently watches your files and only uploads changes to the server. This makes it possible to manage huge backup sets (mine is over 100 GB and growing) while utilizing very little bandwidth.
• File encryption: All data that leaves your PC is encrypted with a 448-bit Blowfish algorithm. Your data is always safe and secure, out of reach of prying eyes.
• Inexpensive: Mozy Pro is $4.95 a month and includes unlimited backup space. Yes… unlimited… I’m in the processes of backing up my entire 750 GB hard disk.

In short, offsite data storage is a fantastic way to make sure you’ll never lose your irreplaceable computer data. Mozy is the best option I’ve found (and I’ve tried a bunch of different services) for accomplishing this easily, quickly, and safely.