http://www.pricewatch.com/hard%5Fdrives/However, local copies of your data do you no good if e.g. a criminal steals both of your computers, or if your house burns to the ground, or if Hurricane Katrina pays a visit to your neighborhood.
For that, you need REMOTE copies of your data, and there I'd recommend purchasing a domain name [about $10 per year] and a webhosting plan [$5 -$10 per month], and uploading copies of your really important files to your website as often as once a day.
For instance, you can use FTP scripts in conjunction with the "-s" option & the Task Scheduler so as to fully automate an FTP upload [although if there are any really sensitive files involved, you should be aware that FTP does NOT encrypt passwords and does NOT encrypt files, so that super-sensitive files should be sent via a fully encrypted protocol, such as SFTP]:
Using FTP Batch ScriptsFor instance, suppose you put something like the following commands in a file called "C:\MYFTPSCRIPT.FTP":
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/96269Managing Scheduled Tasks
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/guide/sas_man_lpja.mspx
and suppose you set the scheduler to run the following program every night at midnight:open FTP.MYDOMAIN.COM
REMOTEUSERNAME
REMOTEPASSWORD
verbose
binarylcd "C:\Documents and Settings\LOCALUSERNAME\My Documents"
mput *
quit
Then every night, at midnight, the scheduler would upload all of the files in your "My Documents" to the FTP side of your web server.ftp.exe -s C:\MYFTPSCRIPT.FTP
There are all sorts of variations you can play on this theme [the UNIX guys like to fiddle around with something called TAR, and "TARBALL" all the directories into one great big flat file], but you should get the idea.
As for domain name registration, I recommend an outfit called "Domains by Proxy", which anonymizes your purchase of the domain name [that way, the bad guys can't go to "WHOIS" and discover who you are, and learn your home address]:
http://www.domainsbyproxy.comAs for web hosting providers, there are literally GAZILLIONS of them out there; the best forum for learning about them is called "Web Hosting Talk":
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=16Right now I'm using something called HostMonster; another with lots of disk space is DreamHost:
http://www.hostmonster.com[Host Monster is based in Utah, so I'm pretty confident that they're GOP-ers. Dreamhost, on the other hand, is in Los Angeles, so who knows?]
Anyway, for about $10 a year in Domain Name registration fees, and about $5-$10 a month in web hosting fees, you can rest easy at night knowing that you've got a remote copy of your data.
This is CORRECT:ftp.exe -s C:\MYFTPSCRIPT.FTP
I.e. there needs to be a colon [":"] after the "-s" and before the file name.ftp.exe -s:C:\MYFTPSCRIPT.FTP
This is CORRECT:ftp.exe -s C:\MYFTPSCRIPT.FTP
I.e. there needs to be a colon [":"] after the "-s" and before the file name.ftp.exe -s:C:\MYFTPSCRIPT.FTP
My daughter went to school (Computer Science) with the Dreamhost founders at Harvey Mudd in Claremont. All these kids are very bright and motivated. Their politics would skew to the left. Quite a few of her friends were at her wedding in March. Many are now completing their PhD's and doing cutting edge work in technological fields that I cannot fathom! (54 y/o living fosssil)