I'm a paranoid person. Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to my digital data. I'm talking about my family photos, home movies, and music collection. As paranoid as I am, however, I must admit that my data backup strategy is about as coherent and stable as Britney Spears's mental health.

At home, I back up all of my important files to a 250GB Buffalo LinkStation network-attached storage (NAS) device. That includes all of the data mentioned above, as well as a large collection of Word documents, spreadsheets, and other miscellaneous (but important) files.

On the job, one of my responsibilities, as chief technology officer for Ziff Davis Media, is reviewing how our company backs up its important data. In doing so, I began to realize that my own personal data backup strategy was lacking a key aspect seen in most corporate IT plans: an off-premises data store. With that in mind, I began my quest to find a good, albeit cheap online backup solution for personal use.

Most online backup solutions would charge you hundreds of dollars per year to store 250GB of data. My budget doesn't run too deep, unfortunately. That's when an idea struck me: What if I contract with a cheap Web-hosting company and use the Web server space as an online backup solution?

Brilliant. I searched and searched, finally finding a company that offers 500GB of Linux Web server space for a mere $29 (a promotional offer) for an entire year. You're probably saying, "WHAT? THAT'S FREAKIN' CHEAP!" Those were my first thoughts, too.

After patting myself on the back for finding this great deal (and shamelessly bragging to all of my IT compatriots), I began the long, tedious task of manually transferring the crème de la crème of my data (some 200GB) to my brand-new, shiny server space. Of course, being a geek, I uploaded my files via secure FTP (sFTP) and managed all of my newfound storage space via a Secure Shell (SSH) terminal window. This particular service did offer a couple of other methods for uploading data, which would have worked in a comparable manner, but I wanted to start off on the right foot by being "secure" with my new server.

Using an encrypted connection to transfer files is generally a slow process, so I set my MacBook up to transfer everything while I slept, woke up and went through the day, slept—and so on, for 14 days. I may be crazy (for transferring such an enormous amount of date via an encrypted connection), but after two weeks, I finally had everything uploaded. And I could at last rest easy knowing that I had a secure "off-premises" data backup strategy.

As the weeks went by, I diligently kept up to date with my data backups, copying over everything to my new Web server space. All the while, I looked for other apps that could automate the transfer process.—