So you got a pretty solid backup plan right? External USB drives, mirrored hard drives, secondary PC hooked up to the local network, and a couple of USB thumb drives carrying some important documents.

Online Statements, scanned receipts, personal documents, pictures, videos, and even music, they can all be stored very conveniently.

But have you ever thought about the worst case scenario? Anything that can wipe out all your data? Fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane, someone breaking into your house, etc?

Consider backing up to the cloud. That is, to a location somewhere on earth that has encryption and proper redundancy that guarantees the content of your data.

There are several online backup providers. I have chosen CrashPlan for my personal documents and DropBox for files I need synchronized across multiple computers.

A couple of weeks ago I visited my accountant and brought over all the required documentation in my USB thumbdrive. He asked for a particular contract for a car lease I signed last year which unfortunately did not have with me. I conveniently opened the CrashPlan application on my laptop, clicked the restore option and selected the file he was asking for. The file was donwloaded and voilà; the information was provided. An added convenience when you got your data on the cloud.

Try them and have peace of mind.

CrashPlan:

DropBox

Happy transferring.