If it makes you feel better Yodaman, I'd get rid of you with the click of a finger if I had the chance.
Sorry, I didn't mean it, my conscience won't let me attack your ego like that and get away with it.
To answer the question of the original post - I got myself a Maxtor Basics 250gb external HDD to back up my stuff onto, however, and they tend to be quite reliable and solid and come with a 3 year warrantee, so it's good to keep stuff backed up on there, though of course I too have found that you need more than one back up. When I was doing my A Levels my PC failed, but everything was backed up onto my USB, so I reinstalled Windows etc. to and fixed the problems...but my USB failed too, however, I did have an internet back-up source, which do exist, though I've not visited mine in a long time.
One that I used was this, GMail drive, which is a 3rd part software for your Google Mail account, I never had any problems with it.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/GMail-Drive-shell-extension.shtml
It installs itself exactly like a hard drive (so it'll appear in My Computer) and it'll use your GMail email inbox to story data.
If you don't trust 3rd Party software, particularly when it comes to email user names and passwords, I believe AOL has one as well called XDrive, but I've just visited it again and that service is no longer running.
There is an alternative, which costs money (though they have a 15-day trial):
https://www.elephantdrive.com/
I've never used it though.
