<p>Backing up to a drive does no good when both your computer and your drive are stolen, when both burn in a fire, or when a crash kills both of them at the same time.</p>
<p>^ Good point. That’s why it’s also good to use some off-site backup service. Prices are coming down (to free in some limited cases).</p>
<p>I’ll second jojoyohan’s recommendation of dropbox. I’m a grad student and I keep everything I work on in my dropbox folder. That way I can access files/data/presentations at any computer, at any time, anywhere. If I’m at home and a co-worker needs an excel sheet I can hop on my laptop and send it to them in about 30 seconds. I can work on writing papers from home for half the morning, save the document, come in to work, and take off right where I saved it from completely seamlessly. The first 2 GB is free, with more free space upon referrals. Monthly plans aren’t too overpriced, and I’m pretty sure when I run out of free space I’m going to be willing to shell out for the massive convenience their utility provides.</p>
<p>(As a note, all files are stored locally on every computer you have your account installed on. That means if my computer in my office crashes I still have physical copies on both my desktop at home and my laptop. Their servers also provide backups of previous files you’ve deleted/modified for a certain amount of time. This feature alone has made the utility worth it to me for when I accidentally make changes to the wrong Excel file and save it. Just go onto their website, look at my change history, and revert back to the previous version!)</p>
<p>If this spiel convinced anyone to get dropbox let me know and I’ll happily provide my referral link (both of us get extra space for using it!).</p>