Electronically Obsessed A tech addict's guide to using the Internet to streamline your life

Automate your backup: Dropbox

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.

Since this blog is all about streamlining your lifestyle with the Internet, it would be silly not to address data backup.  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 term 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.  When you drag and drop files into the Dropbox folder, the files are automatically backed up to Dropbox's servers.

You can even install the Dropbox software on multiple computers 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. Go to the Dropbox website - or, if you want to earn both of us some free storage, use this referral link.
2. Register for an account.
3. Decide if you want: a 2 GB account (free), a 50 GB account ($9.99/month or $99.99/year), a 100 GB account ($19.99/month or $199.99/year).
4. Download and install the Dropbox software.

That's it.  Now, you have an easy off-site backup solution.  Of course, an off-site cloud backup is just one facet of your data backup plan.  I'll address local backups in a later post.

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