Angel Backup is a service which allows you to back up your computer over your internet connection.

This seems like a fantastic idea as, if you're anything like me, you'll put off making backups for months at a time - if you even remember in the first place. Angel Backup takes care of all this, as once installed, your backups will happen completely automatically.

Signing up for the service is pretty simple - you just download a small application from the AngelBackup.com website, and this will then take you through the steps to create a free-trial account. You get 30 days free to try out the service, without having to enter a credit card. After that, you pay based on how much data you want to store, with prices starting from $1.95 per month for a basic 2GB of storage.

Once you've signed up for a free trial, you then select which files and folders you want to back up using a Windows Explorer style interface that is pretty much intuitive. You can also schedule the backups to run all the time, or at a set time each day.

After that, the backup process just runs in the background while you carry on what you were doing. There is a little icon in the task bar which tells you what's going on. I found that it didn't seem to adversely affect my computer's performance. In fact, I didn't even notice that internet browsing was any slower than usual.

I tested out the service with about 100MB of data to upload, which took about an hour - so if you have multiple gigabytes of stuff to back up then you can count on this being a long process. On the other hand, once the first backup is completed only stuff that is new or has been changed will be sent. And it apparently uses something called 'delta-block technology' so if a large file changes, then only the bits that have changed need to be backed up the next time.

Angel Backup give you 3 different methods of restoring files from your back up. You can use the Angel Backup application to, or you can sign into their AngelBackup.com website to download your files - which can be useful if you're using another PC. You also have the option of ordering a full backup set on DVD (at extra cost). I guess this option is in case you've lost everything and don't want to hang around for days while your data downloads.

If you want, you can attach more than one computer to your account by just downloading and installing the software again. This is a great feature if you have more than one PC to back up at home or in your office.

I found the service to be very easy to use, with a nice, intuitive user interface. Backups and restores worked pretty much as I would expect them to and gave me a whole new piece of mind about the security of my data.

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