Quick E-mail Backup Hack

I just saw something about a hack that I use and wanted to pass it on. If you have some files that you need to have backed that are way more important to you than other ones, a great way to do it is to send them to a free e-mail account like gmail. For example, if you are writing your thesis for your Ph. D. it's probably a good idea to send copies to your gmail account every now and then. In the world of backups, one of the best things you can do is have an "off-site" copy of your files. Using a web mail account, you are all set without the headache of building a server. Google or the like has already done it for you. If you hard drive crashes or your laptop gets stolen you still have the most recent copy that you sent to yourself. If you made recent changes that you hadn't e-mailed to yourself yet, you'll loose those, but that's much less bad than having to start over from the top. In the past this was a little harder to do since the limits on email account sizes was pretty small, but when they started being measured in gigabytes, it's a valid solution. I've also taken to sending copies of software that I download to myself. For example, I use an editor called UltraEdit and every time I have rebuild my computer, it takes me forever to dig up a copy since it didn't come with a CD. I've sent a copy to myself so next time all I'll have to do is search for it in my account (which is incredibly easy) and pull it back down. (There are even some hacks out there that all you to see your email account like a hard drive on your computer that I've tried before that work pretty well. But, since that's not official supported by google, I'm staying away from it.)