GEEZ, how should I back up my PC files? Is there any good way?

I've been looking into external hard drives a little recently, and all the reasonably priced ones all have such mixed reviews. A lot of people talk of the external hard drive crashing and losing all of their data. So, I just thought maybe I'd look into online storage like Mozy. They also have very mixed reviews with people talking about performance issues, unsupported file types, some 30 day purge thing, it constantly runs on your computer, etc. Does anything work well that isn't hundreds and hundreds of dollars?