Archaeologica.org

Want an ironclad backup system? One that also saves your data if all your computer gear is stolen/burgled (including your external backup harddisk...), or if your house or office burns down, or gets flooded, or explodes, etc. etc.? Because realistically anything can happen of course.

Storing (a copy of) your backup data off-site, at a physically different address, mitigates those risks.

Now you can with (FREE) Crashplan (http://b4.crashplan.com/)! Simply store your backup data on someone else's computer or external harddisk! Via LAN, or via the internet! Just make a deal with someone (relative, family, friend, colleague), even on the other side of the world, that you will store their backup data set if they will store yours!

FYI: your backup data are totally secure behind your password, wherever in the world they are.

RETRACTION:

I tried taking my own medicine and started making a backup to Crashplan's 'cloud'. Crashplan started by inventorying my laptop's internal HD and then started the process of creating (uploading) the initial backup. All neat and tidy, until I saw how long that uploading (over broadband) would take: 6 weeks for 250GB! Of uninterrupted uploading, mind you! Sorry, but that's just not compatible with a laptop which should be ready every morning to go out for the day!
And even if 6 weeks were possible to somehow overcome/accomodate, the incremental backups would probably take days each. Everytime.

So, people, I regret suggesting this software to you. Its concept is a nice idea, but we need 100 to 1,000 times faster connections/networks/protocols to make this practical IRL.
Fibre optics might make that possible, but fibre optical networks are still very thin on the ground (except in South Korea, I believe). And are mostly very limited locally. It's doubtful whether that technology will ever really cover the globe, because it is hardwired, and requires the physical shifting of billions of tonnes of soil to lay cables! That is what kept Africans isolated from eachother and the world until a little over a decade ago. They considered it simply too much work, and too expensive, to lay telephone cables. You can't see buried telephone cables. But you can see a gleaming new Mercedes. That's the choice regional and national administrators in Africa have...
And then mobile phones entered the scene. And today every second herder in Africa chats away on his mobile while tending his flock of two dozen skinny goats in the savannahs...

Wireless made that possible!