Backup your files using Skype

Backup programs have been in existence for years — some allow you to backup your computer files locally to an external hard disk or a portable drive, while others like Mozy and Carbonite are designed to help you save a backup of your important files and folders to an online Web server.

Backup programs have been in existence for years — some allow you to backup your computer files locally to an external hard disk or a portable drive, while others like Mozy and Carbonite are designed to help you save a backup of your important files and folders to an online Web server.

Nothing lasts forever
The drawbacks associated with these methods are obvious. Hard disks and portable drives will not last forever and can get misplaced. If you are using an online backup service, files will be inaccessible when your Internet connection is down. Plus, the data might be lost if the backup company goes out of business.

Cucku.com is a new backup program-cum-web service that takes the best parts of each form of backup. First, Cucku lets you easily backup your important files and folders to your own hard drive and portable drives.

Then, in a unique twist on traditional online backup services, it lets you store an encrypted copy of your files on your friends and family members' computers over the Internet using Skype.

Best of backup worlds
This gives you both the accessibility of a local drive and the additional security of a remote backup, all the while letting you keep your data on computers of people you trust instead of a data centre.

Since it can often take a long time to transfer your entire backup over the Internet, Cucku allows you to dump the backup onto your friend's computer through a portable drive if you wish. Later, only incremental updates will be transferred over the Internet.

You can also view individual files that have been backed up through Cucku, so if you accidentally delete a file on your PC, you can always restore it without having to restore the entire backup.
Amit Agarwal writes a technology blog at http://www.labnol.org/