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We just averted a family disaster. The hard drive on our family PC crashed over the weekend. That is the machine on which we had stored all of our digital pictures, dating back more than 10 years. All of those photos would like be gone forever, but ....

I had installed a backup system. I believe I first read about JungleDisk.com on Lifehacker. Jungle Disk is something you install on your PC, you register for an account and you pay $2 per month, plus a very small charge for data uploading and storage (15 cents each month per gigabyte of storage used, and 10 cents per GB of data uploaded, 17 cents per GB of data downloaded). Then you set your Jungle Disk to back up all of your data (photos, documents, music, whatever else you choose) at a scheduled time and it takes care of the rest.

When the inevitable hard drive crash happens -- and it's a question of when, not if -- it provides great peace of mind to have one's data backed up.  When our technical guru, Mark, helped us tap into Jungle Disk to retrieve our photos, I told him that this not only saved my pictures, but also my marriage. If 10 years of family photos had vaporized, well, let's just say things wouldn't have been pretty around here.

There are other backup products out there. (See Lifehacker's suggestions.)  And some people do their own backing up, copying their data to an external hard drive, or to DVDs, compact disks, or anything else that stores data. But I knew that I wouldn't have the discipline to stay on top of a weekly or monthly backup schedule, which is why I went the automated route.

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here. I just want everyone to get a backup plan for their data before it's too late. (Cue Karl Malden saying "Don't let this happen to you!")

---Greg

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