Can anyone recommend a good online backing-up service? If my computer went up in flames, I'd be fine(ish) but if the house went up in flames it would be very un-fine... Whatever the solution is has to be very painless and quick, or I won't do it often enough.

Emma

This may not be the solution you're after, but I send things to my yahoo mailbox. Simple and free...

Emma
Could you just email it to a trusted other party? I send all my documents to my husband's email address for backup.

There's a website called www.streamload.com which allows you to store files on the internet. It's free up to a certain amount of memory (enough for word files).

Cath

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You get 25gb free, so actually you can store loads. From what I remember it's pretty simple to use. Haven't used it for a while.

I used to use a similar service called XDrive (www.xdrive.com). I've no reason to believe it's any better than the others, apart from the fact that it's been around for at least 8 years, which is a lifetime in IT terms.

Might another solution be a USB pen? You can get 1Gb now for less than £50 and they fit on your keyring.

Jon

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Cath - I was sure you'd got that wrong - that it was 25Mb not 25Gb but it is!!

That's amazing and hard to believe. I wonder how they store it all?

J

It was years ago I first used Streamload, so it's been around for a while too. I don't think I can even remember my log-in to find out what I've got stored there. I'll probably find some old obscure rave tunes or something!

Cath

Cath, Jon, Caroline, Jess, thank you. That's really helpful. I've realised it would be a fair old disaster to lose emails, and now I've got a digital camera, my storage needs are going to increase a lot... Off to do some nosing round the net.

Emma

Emma,

If you have broadband, depending on your provider, you might have some free online storage as part of your account. For example, BT Yahoo do something called Briefcase that gives you 30Mb free and more if you pay extra.

Tony

Tony, that's a thought, thank you. Don't know if Pipex are that user-friendly, but I'll have a look.

Emma

I used to use the little USB sticks storing thingys but was never enough memory if you have pictures / music and other stuff on your PC.

I recently bought a back up hard drive. It's lovely, it's silver, it's about 5 inches by 3 inches in size, very thin, wasn't that expensive really, about 120 candian dollars, which is NOTHING in comparison to a couple of USB sticks and it has about 20 GB in memory. I can back everything up from my PC.

For my internet bookmarks I export a bookmark file from time to time and save that.

Totally recommend it, and if you're worried about fire in general you store it with a friend or relative, or in a fireproof box at home.



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p.s. you can get fireproof boxes at B&Q.

Why not get yourelf a website? Folders on websites don't have to be for public viewing. It's very easy just to copy a folder off your hard drive and paste in onto your site. You can easily overpaste too. Some of the deals for websites are quite cheap.

Meadowsweet