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You probably know by now that you should back up your important computer files regularly. (If you don't know that yet, one day you'll learn the hard way).

Hard drives are now quite cheap compared to 10 years ago. I use a 500 GB external drive to back up my hard drive once a day. That way, the worst thing that can happen is I lose one day's work.

Actually, that's not entirely correct. If my house burned down, I'd lose all the files on my computer and my backup hard drive, because they're both in the same place. Some people stash their back up drives at friend's houses or at the office. It's a hassles and potentially dangerous. One friend kept his back up hard drive in the trunk of his car, and when it was stolen, he was terrified that someone would find his banking passwords and clean out his accounts, so he had to change all his email and website passwords.

Now he and I use an online remote backup service, which lets you copy your computer files over the Internet to hard drives far away. If your house burns down, your files will be safe. If the remote backup location burns down you still have the originals on your computer. (If your house and the remote backup site burn down on the same day, you're out of luck, pal).

I've been using a free remote backup service called IDrive, which works with Mac and Windows. The application window has two panels: the left panel shows the files on your hard drive and the right panel shows the files that have been copied to iDrive's remote backup system. To select which folders and files you want to back up, click the checkboxes next to their names. When you're ready to back up your files, click the Backup now button. You can also schedule your backups to be automatically performed each day, which is highly recommended.

iDrive is free for up to 2 GB of file space. This is probably enough to back up your important word processing and spreadsheet files, along with some of your favorite photos and home videos. If you want to back up your entire hard drive, consider IDrive Pro, which provides 150 GB of storage for $4.95 a month.

If you're concerned about security (and you should be) read about IDrive's security features here: www.idrive.com/online-backup-security.htm. The IDrive application encrypts all the data it sends to IDrive so hackers can't touch it.