The DCH Column

The last thing anyone wants to think about is data backup.  Yeah, it's boring and can be super complicated.  No one wants to deal with backups until that fateful day when your data is gone.  Just think, your photos, music, documents... all gone. I've seen it happen to others and had it happen to myself, not a fun experience.

Nothing is more of a time suck than trying to recover lost data from a dead hard drive or, god forbid, having to recreate that paper or work report from scratch.

Dropbox is an online data synchronization, backup, and file sharing service ... all-in-one.  When you install the Dropbox software, a Dropbox folder will appear in your file manager. Anything you put in the DropBox is automatically synced with a secure server on the Internet (using AES-256 encryption over an SSL encrypted channel – which is good) – giving you off-site backup that you can access from any computer with an internet connection.

You can even install the Dropbox software on multiple computers (which can be a mixture of Mac, PC or Linux) and link all of the software installations to your account.  When you modify a file on one computer, the file is automatically synchronized on all of the other computers.

To automate your backup, follow these simple steps:

1. Use this referral link to go to the Dropbox website, which will earn both of us some free storage.
2. Register for an account.
3. Start off with a free 2 GB account (you'll get extra 250MB using my link above)
4. Download and install the Dropbox software.

That's it.  Now, you have an easy off-site backup solution.

I've also downloaded the free Dropbox iPhone app from iTunes. I can now access my Dropbox files from my iPhone. This includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files that are easily displayed.