Best Free Online File Backup Services

Your computer holds a lot of important data -- some of it may be work-related, and undoubtedly, much of it holds great sentimental value. You may have important business documents, financial statements, family photos, videos, and email on your computer. Losing those files and folders, or even your hard drive completely, could be devastating on a number of levels. Fortunately, however, there is a way that you can avoid losing your cherished photos, important work projects, and your kids' video files, and it's as simple as using an internet file backup service.

Here is a list of five offsite backup services that you can use to safeguard your computer's important files. While some of these online storage services do offer paid options, each website offers at least 2GB of free data storage for personal use, which is enough space to store at least some of your most important files.

Adrive

Adrive is at the top of the list because they provide a substantial amount of remote file storage space: 50GB to be exact, and it's free. To put this number into perspective, that's enough space to store over 60,000 images from the average 3-megapixel camera -- that's a lot of space.

The tradeoff, however, for Adrive's remote file backup service is that it lacks a number of features that other file backup services offer. For one, you do not get a secure connection while transferring your files to their offsite backup drive, and another is that you do not get to use their desktop file transfer manager, or even an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software to upload your files, for that matter. Still -- 50GB is a lot of space, and if you can deal with the lack of features, it might be a good option for you.

Skydrive

Live.com has their own online storage solution -- Skydrive. This is number two on the list because, like Adrive, Skydrive offers a more-than-decent chunk of online file storage space -- 25GB. There are some limitations, such as it appears that the maximum file upload size is 50MB, which should be fine for most users, and they offer a browser-based file transfer page rather than software for your computer desktop. Considering all you need is a MSN, Hotmail, or Live.com account, however, it's a great deal if you can handle their upload restrictions.

To get around some of Skydrive's upload limitations, you can use SD Explorer. SD Explorer is a Windows computer addon that allows you to add and remove files from your backup storage space much like you would work with folders and files on your own computer, albeit a bit more slowly. Much like many of these internet file backup services, SD Explorer has both a free and paid option. One note on this desktop backup software -- the paid option purportedly allows you to bypass Skydrive's 50MB-per-file upload limitation.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a simple, but powerful and reliable offsite file synchronization software. Unlike many of the desktop-based file and folder backup tools, however, Dropbox allows you to sync a single folder and all of the files contained within that folder in real-time. You start with 2GB of online storage, but you can double your free account's storage capacity by referring friends to the service.

In the near future, Dropbox will allow you to sync multiple folders on your computer, though it's not clear at this time whether this feature will be offered with their free internet file backup account.

iDrive

iDrive, like Dropbox, offers free customers the same features in their desktop backup solution that is offered to paid customers. Also like Dropbox, iDrive provides 2GB of free online storage space. However, this is where the similarities end. iDrive's desktop client and file backup service offers a nice array of features when compared to other free providers.

For instance, they offer free customers a virtual drive, where you can access your iDrive storage area much like a folder on your computer. They also use SSL encryption for both file transfers and storage; allow locked file backups, which can be problematic with other online backup solutions, and their software allows you to do what they call a 'timeline restore'. This allows you to restore your files up to a certain point in time, which can be quite handy if you have to, for instance, do a system restore on your PC which results in lost files.

My Other Drive

My Other Drive is the final internet file backup service on our list. Like a couple of other backup solutions here, My Other Drive also offers 2GB free online storage space, but free accounts are ad supported. While most of My Other Drive's desktop software features are the same, irrespective of whether you have a free or paid account, there is one defining difference between this file backup service and others -- the ability to mail in your files.

Now, this feature doesn't come into play for free accounts, but if you plan on upgrading your online file backup storage space, and you have a slower internet connection, mailing in your computer's backups would be a very nice feature to have, and is not a regular feature for most file backup services.

Keeping a backup of your most important files is, as you might guess, important. Because there are dozens, if not scores, of free internet file backup services available, there is no reason why you can't have an offsite backup system in place for your files, regardless of your current budget. Take a few minutes, look the various service providers, and compare -- they're free, so why not? If you don't have an online backup solution today -- get one ASAP. Because, unfortunately for you and your most important files, tomorrow might be too late.