Backing up your Mac’s files has come of age. If there’s one thing we’ll remember about 2008, it’s that back ups matter.

First, we started with an external hard drive. Then, we added wireless back up to an external hard drive. What’s next? Backing up our Mac’s files on the internet.

There are many ways to back up and secure our valuable files, whether they’re photos, or music, or movies, or documents. Some use CDs and back up the files away from the office or home.

Some use multiple hard drives and a convoluted back up scheme which involves extra utilities, Apple’s Time Machine, and yet more hard drives.

What about backing up files online, over the internet? Is that data protection whose time has come?

There are many ways to back up files online, including Mac mini Colocation and the value of Apple’s Time Capsule which can be secured in a remote data center. That’s an attractive online back up scheme, but still requires effort and management.

Drobo is another home, small office solution which simply adds more and more hard drives to the back up equation, still suffering from a single catastrophic failure opportunity.

There are a number of internet-based, online back up schemes available for Mac users. These include, but are not limited to, Mozy, BackJack, and Amazon.

All three back up files from your computer, across the internet, and into a data center. All three are Mac friendly.

MozyHome is for Mac users to take their home files and move them to a secure, remote location. MozyHome is free and gives users up to 2 gigabytes of storage. Mozy provides software to make your Mac file back ups.

BackJack is also Mac friendly, comes with 5 gigabytes of storage capacity for $15 a month. More storage can be added.

Amazon’s Simple Storage Service is a pay-as-you-go service. 15-cents per gigabyte per month, but you pay for upload and download, and need a special utility to transfer files.

Generally speaking, these online services offer secure data center storage of your files, and they can be accessed from anywhere on the internet.

Is that the future of Mac back ups for home and small business users? Prices for online back up have come down in recent years.

Still, affordability not withstanding, questions arise. How secure are the files? How quickly can back ups be made? How quickly can files be restored? What happens to your files if you miss a monthly payment?

Some technology pundits predict that in coming years we’ll store all our valuable files online. Does that concern you? Are you willing to have valuable files out of your home?

Is it time for Mac users to take their files and shove them-- out on the internet?

I am not there yet.  I am still at the external drive in a safe mode.  I just don’t like the idea of my files being somewhere far away.  There do seem to be a lot of good options though.

I just signed up for MozyHome today. Free. I thought I read somewhere that Mozy also has $5.00 a month for unlimited personal backup.

So far it backs up in the background. I don’t do anything. Little by little I’m adding some files to backup. I can only imagine how long it would take to back up my iTunes music collection or all the photos in iPhoto.

I’ve been using Amazon’s S3 service because it’s soooooo dirt cheap, but it’s also a pain to back up to. I signed up for Mozy. So far, so good. It’s one thing to make a back up of your Mac’s hard drives, but it’s something else again to back up the really important files online. It’s slower, costs more, and the fear factor is a little higher. For now, everything I have is in multiple places.