Got Storage?
Three months ago, about a year and a half after I bought my HP laptop and 3-year service warranty, two out of three SCSI ports just stopped working. I brought my computer –my lifeline, my means of making a living — to Computer World to have them fix these ports. Simple enough, right? Some (really) young kid at the service desk, with the personality of a tissue, tells me that my entire motherboard needs to be replaced. It will take two weeks to be repaired and I need to back up all my files because while they’re replacing this “motherboard”? files could get erased or lost. Two weeks!
Well, I’m thankful that I splurged for that service warranty or else things would be very expensive and I’d be having a New York-style fit on some Denver store manager about having spent a fortune on my computer only to have it break down in less than two years. But, although I’m fairly computer literate, I’ve never backed-up my files and, embarrassingly enough – I’m not exactly sure how to do it. So I put it off since my computer still worked, and the thought of being computer-less for two weeks gave me nightmares, until now.
Enter Box.net, a personal data storage site. It’s a simple way to back up and store your files so that they are easily accessible anywhere, or to share files with others. I checked it out and thought – this would be a great way to back up my files while Computer World does its thing!
They offer 1 GB of storage free and packages starting at $4.99 a month per month for 5GBs. You can back up important files, save photos, and transfer files/folder from one computer to another. It’s pretty nifty, albeit a little buggy. I tried to upload a large, important folder and got an error message. I wrote to their customer service group twice, only to hear back several days later from two different people – one suggesting that I sign up for their paid service and one suggesting I try the task again. Apparently, with the free service you can’t upload files larger than 10 MB, although I was able to upload a 17 MB folder with no problem. With their paid service, you can upload files up to 1 GB (and probably get faster customer service replies).
Although I did find the free service a little buggy, which caused me to be slightly reluctant to pony up for their paid service, I do like the idea, design and navigation and will mostly likely give the paid service a chance when I do part with my computer for two weeks. Oh, they also offer an affiliate program (remember those?). And apparently Mark Cuban of Dallas Mavericks and Broadcast.com fame believes in them; he’s on their advisory board.