Perhaps you deleted the wrong file, or your computer's hard drive found the worst possible moment to crash. You suddenly have nothing left to show for all of your hard work and dedication. You have one hour to submit your project. Not fun.

Such unfortunate events are all too common, which is why it's so important to use a backup device for your hard drive. A hard drive backup device can be pricey, so you may want to consider using an online backup service. Not that the device isn't a great thing to have—it is—but it's not going to protect your files from natural disasters or theft.

You probably already know the importance of backing up your files (or you wouldn't be here), so you want to know about the best online backup. I'm going to show you the very best resource I have found for choosing an online backup, but first, I want to cover what it is that you should look for when comparing services.

First and foremost, the best online backup service will protect your sensitive information. Let's say, for instance, that you want to back up all of the financial records from your Quicken software. Would you trust that information with any old fly by night internet service? Hope not! It's imperative that a quality backup service use encryption to secure your files and protect your privacy.

Unless you want to spend your free time manually backing up your files, you should go with a service that automatically recognizes changes and backs them up.

You will need to back up large files manually, such as full programs, but a quality backup service will automatically back up your documents and photos. Some services allow you to choose a time for the program to run its backup service while others do so continuously.

Trust me on this one, gang. No one will ever remember or take the time to manually back stuff up. There's always "tomorrow" to do it and you'll find yourself saying that "Nothing will happen today, it's fine. I'm too busy and I'll do it tomorrow." That's the kiss of death.

Again, there is a great site for comparing differences in the best online backup services, so we'll get to that in a minute. First I want to explain how it works so you can decide if it's something you want to use on your computer.

The best online backups use a tiny software application to monitor the changes made within your files. Some programs mark your files with colorful icons so that you know which of your files have online backup. It should smoothly interact with your operating system so that you don't experience a slowdown. In the event of an emergency, you can access your lost files within minutes.

Now that you know the advantages of an online backup service and how it works, we can move on to the most important information — where to find the best online backup service that meets your needs.