FAQ > Keeping Your Computer Healthy > What is the best free backup system?
Go to www.dropbox.com, register, and install Dropbox on your computer. You get 2 GB of storage space with the free account. Now take all of your most critical files and put them in your Dropbox folder. You can install the Dropbox software on as many computers as you want.
All of those files will always sync up with your storage space on Dropbox's server and then back down to all of the other computers you installed Dropbox on. When you change/add/delete a file from any of your computers with Dropbox, the changes first go up to the server and then back down to the other computers.
There are Android, iPhone, and iPad apps plus you can always access your Dropbox files from any web browser.
If your computer crashes, gets viruses, or needs to be formatted for any other reason you don't have to worry about backing up your files--they are already backed up in your Dropbox account. If you format your hard drive and install a new operating system, simply reinstall the Dropbox software and it will download all of your files.
Note: There are 2 ways to backup a file that a program uses constantly in order to function (Quickbooks company file or an Outlook .pst file for example). We'll use Outlook as an example. When you start up Outlook, it opens a big file with a .pst extension that has all of your settings, emails, appointments, etc. If you don't want to have to remember to copy that .pst file into your Dropbox to back it up, just close Outlook, move the .pst file into Dropbox, open Outlook, and tell it to use the .pst file in its new location. The data file management in Outlook is located by clicking File, Account Settings, and Data Files. *Caution: that .pst file grows very large over time if you don't clean up Outlook by deleting old stuff.
A good backup plan involves more than one type of backup! If you need to backup everything on your computer to another location automatically, use Carbonite (www.carbonite.com). Currently it's $55/year to continually backup everything on a single computer (no file space limit). Add a simple external hard drive backup and you're set.