It happens to everyone and it happened to me last year…my laptop hard drive died.  The Apple Store replaced it, of course, but along with it I lost all of my data.  I do regularly back up my data but if I back up every month or so, I lost a month or two of data.

Since that time I use one of my favorite free applications, Dropbox which solves two problems for me at once. Dropbox gives you remote storage that is accessible on every computer you use.  This means your data is constantly backed up and that you can work on the same files from multiple computers.

So, for example, I am enrolled in graduate school and there are several papers I need to be writing at any given time.  I keep those files as either Word documents or Pages files in my dropbox folder and I can sit down at either my desktop, my laptop, or even a friend’s computer, login to dropbox and work on those same files.  Once I save the file, the changes are instantly reflected on every computer and, of course, there are multiple backups to the file available on each of those computers after syncing. There’s even an iPhone app which provides access to your files on the go.

I have a paid MobileMe service which does the same but it costs money and though it pains me to say it, I have had trouble syncing folders via MobileMe whereas Dropbox works reliably and seamlessly.  Check it out.