Everyone must have been impressed when Apple launched Mac OS X Leopard, which features Time Machine, an automated backup system. The catch is, you’ll have to have an external drive to use Time Machine, and there are also people (like me) who can’t afford to get Leopard (yet).

Luckily, there’s Mozy.

Mozy offers free, secure, automated backups online. A free account gives you 2GB of space, or if that isn’t enough, you can opt to pay as little as $4.95 a month for unlimited space. The backups are incremental: this means that only changed files are uploaded, so that the space used is minimal over a period of time.

You’ll just need to download the Mozy client (Windows and Mac versions available) and leave it running in the background. At first use, you’ll be asked to select which files you want to backup. After that, you can either leave Mozy to do the backing up whenever your computer’s idle, or you can also start a backup manually anytime. It’s that simple.

Even better is its referral system: If you get a friend to use Mozy, you AND your friend get an additional 256 megabytes of space EACH. So that’s 1GB for recommending the service to 4 friends, and your friends benefit from the arrangement too. A good bargain, isn’t it?

So help me and help yourself to get extra 256MB free by signing up for a free account and entering my referral code: DDCGTM.