Two years ago, my hard disk failed. Completely. This was excellent news as my computer ran a lot faster after a clean installation of Windows XP but bad news because I lost email, names and addresses, documents etc.
One thing on my to-do list was to investigate offline storage to backup key data files to avoid a repetition. And, yes, this ‘Next Action’ had been on the to-do list for two years.
So now I am using the freeware edition of SyncBack to synchronise folders between my two PC’s at home and backup key files to my FTP site. The FTP site is constrained to 30 MB but should be adequate for now. Large files (photos) are burned to CD.
As I now use Thunderbird (not Outlook Express), my email folders are simple, plain old fashioned text files that can be imported into any (normal) email client anywhere.
SyncBack is really intuitive software, fast, well documented and highly recommended.