Back up everything you own with free set-and-forget utilities

Data disaster can strike anywhere, anytime. If you're not making regular backups, you're asking for trouble. Trust me. In that spirit of doom and gloom, I've rounded up five free backup utilities for preserving different types of data. All of them are "set-and-forget" programs, meaning once you've installed and configured them, they'll do their thing in the background. Doesn't get much easier than that.

• Amic Email Backup This highly automated tool backs up most popular e-mail clients at scheduled times and can restore the library to another computer (great if you have to move to a new machine following some disaster).
• Comodo Backup This full-featured utility lets you archive specified files and folders to any number of destinations: external and network drives, blank discs, an FTP server, and so on.
• MozyHome One of my favorites, MozyHome offers 2GB of free online storage and a simple utility for choosing what to back up. Unlimited storage costs a reasonable $4.95 monthly. The service is available for both Windows and Mac systems.
• PIM Backup Windows Mobile device users get a backup every time they sync, but this utility adds phone logs, text messages, and other data to the mix.
• Yahoo Autosync An oldie but goodie, Autosync (formerly Intellisync) synchronizes your contacts, calendar, and other data to the Web. That not only gives you a backup in case of disaster, but also makes your info available from any PC.