Playing It Safe What if all your computer data was wiped out in a day? Don't panic--it could never happen . . . or could it?

Lately, a recurrent nightmare has ruined my sleep. But tonightI'll sleep well because I finally put those fears to rest. Thenightmare: losing all my personal finance records, plus invoicingdata, accounts receivable, and current work in progress. That wouldspell disaster. Of course, I've known for years that every homebusiness should come up with an off-site scheme for storingcritical information, but I never did anything about it because,really, what was to be done? Cart stuff every other day to amammoth safe-deposit box at a bank? There just was no easysolution, so I suffered the anxiety accompanying the knowledgethat, poof, my business could vaporize in a matter of a few meanminutes.

Picture this: All my financial records are kept inQuicken and, yep, I routinely back up the key files to a Zip drive.I also back up all the other critical files-receivables, work inprogress-to a Zip disk. That's good as far as it goes, but whatif a burglar breaks in and makes off with my computer? For sure,he'll also snag the Zip drive and disks, and where does thatleave me?

And what about a fire? Whoosh, the files I'd need would goup in smoke--and the fire wouldn't thoughtfully spare the Zipback-up.

Start fantasizing about catastrophes and it's easy to pickout a half-dozen scenarios that could wipe out all your keyinformation and, although the odds of any of these disasters comingtrue are slender, that's still a chewy risk for any homebusiness to take.

True story: A few years ago I was a partner in a PR firmand was spending Thanksgiving Day in the office. I heard a"pop" in another room, went to investigate, and therefrigerator was on fire. It had freakishly exploded. I emptied agiant water jug on it and dragged it outside, so no harm was done.But what if I hadn't been there on such an unlikely day? Nowonder I've had nightmares.

What's the solution that's letting me sleep better?i-drive (http://www.idrive.com), a Web-based file storage depot that gives me 50 megabytes ofoff-site storage. What good is 50 megs in an era of 10-plusgigabyte drives? Judiciously used, 50 megs are ample for stashingthe files you really need-in fact, I'm using only a couplemegabytes of that space, but everything important is stowed. Theprice of this i-drive security blanket? Nothing. Storage isfree.

Better still, i-drive throws in "Synch," a utilityprogram that makes it easy to batch upload files from your harddrive to i-drive. But (and this is important!) files on i-drive arepublicly accessible unless you stash them in the"private" folder. Put them in other folders andthey're easily shared with others--put case studies, clientlists, etc. here and tell prospects how to fetch their own copies.The bad news, of course, is you don't want your Quicken filesto be public domain-so never forget that they go in the"private" folder. Do that and you've got peace ofmind.

Add up your critical files and odds are you won't have morethan five or ten megs that you can't live without. Need morethan the 50 megs provided by i-drive? The Web offers numerous freestorage sites, including FreeDiskSpace (http://www.freediskspace.com ),X:drive (http://www.xdrive.com), Driveway (http://www.driveway.com ) andNetdrive (http://www.netdrive.com ). Rightthere, you have more than 100 megs of free online storage and, in apinch, several of these sites sell extra space (X:drive, forinstance, provides 25 megs free and an additional 25MB costs $4.95per month).

Which is the best? For my money, i-drive's "Synch"tool makes the uploading smooth--but you may prefer anotherservice's interface and tools. Check several out--but find oneyou like and get busy uploading those files you need to stay inbusiness. It may be free, but it's also one of the smartestinvestments you'll make in your business's survival.