Backup Backup

You're sitting in front of your computer, feeling the rush of inspiration. The past week, your thoughts have been flowing. You've written over five chapters, and feel great about it.

You move the mouse over the 'save' button one last time, about to turn your computer off. When suddenly, your computer goes blank.

You stare for a moment, not sure what happened. Your heart starts to pound a little harder, but you say to yourself, "Don't panic. I saved it an hour ago. That's just an hour's worth of work." You hit the "on" button and wait for the computer to boot.

It doesn't.

Now you feel your head pounding, your palms getting sweaty. You tell yourself that you'll be able to retrieve everything on the hard drive, but inside, you're just not sure. You try to remember the last time you backed up your computer. Two months ago? You emailed a copy of it to yourself two weeks ago. But, you realize with a sinking heart, that means all five new chapters are gone. Not too mention anything else you had on your computer.

This has never happened to anyone of you...right? Of course not. You're too smart for that.

Well, it's happened to me! I paid $200 to someone one time so they could retrieve information off my hard drive after my computer crashed. Just about a year ago, I emailed my latest draft to a friend so she could look over it--and the next day the computer killed itself. And yet, in spite of these experiences, I consistently neglect to backup except maybe once a month.

There's a solution!!!! My friend Calista on Twitter introduced me to mozy.com, and I'm so excited about it I have to tell you. I signed up last week. This online backup program (not storage, but backup) will upload files you've selected from your computer to a server, as often as you'd like. Once week, three times a day. Then if your computer ever crashes, you just hit the 'restore' button on the website!

Is that cool or what??? Not only that, but the first 2 gigs are FREE. And while they're not paying me to blog about this, if you click on this link and sign up, you and I will both get an extra 1/2 gig of free space when you do your first upload.

I'm way excited about this. I just see it as a total win-win situation. And I won't have to worry again!!!

So, go ahead. Tell me you don't need this program. Tell me you always remember to back up and have never lost ANYTHING. I'm waiting. :)

Edited to add: Getting to the FREE plan is a little hard. First click on the referral link above, and then MANUALLY change the web address to mozy.com/free. Hope that works for you!