Automatic Backup

[Takeshi]

If you've seen my recent offer, Naruto manga, you'd know I have some problem with my laptop.

I've got it running again by using my TV as screen for it. Now my laptop just looks like a keyboard xD

In Win7 and Vista it's been saying "bla bla bla your HDD is soon going to fail" and it's been one year since it said that, so I think it may crash any time. But seeing as I've just started to use it for homework, I'd like to know if you know any backup solutions:

I'd like to be able to upload my homework to a server of some sort auto, is there any program for Win7 that can do that? I'm aware that I can use Google Documents though I prefer using OpenOffice, but I'll start using Documents if no good suggestions comes up.

I could also just save my home work on a USB drive, though I don't have any that is, like, reliable...

[Arveene]

Multiple USB drives, depending on how many / how large you could e-mail them to yourself as attachments. Maybe make a new gmail account and use it strictly for e-mailing homework to yourself. Then you'll have multiple backups?

[kureshii]

You could try Dropbox. They don't have webdoc-editing services, but it's about as automated as things get. You just set a folder to be synced, and any file you add to it will be synced to their server. You can also add other users to that folder's share, and anyone else sharing that folder will have their copy of that folder automatically synced as well. Of course, you'll probably want to avoid directly editing files in that folder...

If you don't mind something less automated, I'd recommend Box.net.

If you have your own backup server already and just want to run backup jobs on a schedule, I'd recommend AllWaySync (limited-use shareware) or Toucan (freeware). I find AllWaySync to be much faster and easier to use as compared to Toucan (which seems to be programmed in Java; it's really slow and unresponsive on large backup jobs), but you'll need a license key (legally obtained or otherwise) for heavy backup schedules.

[Takeshi]

Dropbox looks like what I was looking for, thanks Kureshii.

[Drew]

Wow, Dropbox is really awesome. Thanks a ton, kureshii.

[kureshii]

You're welcome It used to be beta, and getting an invite was a pain... but things are much easier now.