I hate CDs and, I hate DVDs… not the content that goes on them, but the fact that they are so easily scratched and believe it or not, are not a permanent backup media. I’m not sure how many other people out there have had a problem with burning CDs in their lifetime or not.. but coming from a person whom has burned a LOT of DVD’s and CD’s both for myself and for other people.. I’ve had my share of problems.. nothing irked me more than having a DVD that burned properly.. then get an email a day or two later from the friend I burned it for.. “Hey Len, it doesn’t play”.. GRRR!!
Now movies are one thing, as I really don’t care whether my backup copy works or not.. I mean, I can always rent it or face it.. re-download it. But when it comes to backing up.. say, pictures I’ve taken or have myself.. well, I would be extremely pissed off if I had spent the few minutes it takes to backup the pictures on DVD or other media, only to find when I needed to restore them after a hard drive crashes or something.. that they were irretrievable due to some stupid scratch or them being too old to even recognize.
So, enter my solution… before I go on however.. know that I pay $4.95 USD a month for this solution.. this comes to about $60 a year… which I am more than willing to fork up knowing that not only my own, but my parents digital photos are backed upl. Mind you, I’m only paying for my own photos to be backed up. Here’s how I do it in 2 easy steps:
I have a paid subscription to Mozy Home.. and with that subscription it entitles me to unlimited backup space for $4.95 a month. The program that you install is easy to run, and easy to setup backups to monitor folders for changes and upload the changes, and new items when you take more pictures or whatever.- I also use a ‘sync’ utility called Windows Live Sync to sync folders from one computer to another. The premise behind this program is if you had settings or music or folders on say, your work computer… you could sync it to your home computer automatically.. or at least as fast as your internet connection could upload and download. What I use it for, is to sync ‘Mom’s Pictures’ folder from my parents computer, to ‘My Pictures’ on my home computer.
So you see what happens?
When Mom throws her pictures in her “Mom’s Pictures” folder on her computer at home (and she actually does a great job of keeping them all in seperate folders when she takes new pictures), they automatically get uploaded to my computer all the way across town. Then.. Mozy Home kicks in every few hours or when it detects changes, and uploads the new files (Mom’s Pictures) to their secure servers on the Internet. Mozy doesn’t know, nor care, that the pictures were uploaded from my folks computer.. they just care that there are new files and that they need to be backed up!
So now my parents pictures aren’t only backed up to her own computer (where she’s scared to delete anything of course), they’re also on my computer.. and also backed up to the Internet. Sweet eh? A little sidenote, she ALSO (I have no idea why) buys 4 gig flash drives and backs them up there as well.. (again.. don’t ask).
To be honest.. if someone else out there was interested in doing this, or having me backup their photos for them in this fashion.. hey, let me know.. I’ll charge you 1/2 the price of my mozy backup.. meaning.. $2.50 a month.. all you’ll have to do is just allow me remote access for a few minutes to setup the sync software (this will be way quicker than trying to explain it), and then just keep all your pictures that you want backed up in 2 places in one folder on your computer.
Shoot me off an email if you’re interested. Obviously this will benefit you in that you save the price of your backup, also, you’d have someone trained that can just quickly go in and do it. I’ll even setup a PayPal subscription so that you can just have the $2.50 come out automatically 
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