Computers have become a daily necessity for many people. People use them for a wide variety of uses. Many of the files on your computer are important documents and the loss of these documents can cause a great deal of lost time and money. Data backups are the best way to prevent permanent loss. There are many ways to backup your data. We highly recommend that you backup your important data to an external source such as a CD, DVD, external drive. The next best option would be to have a 2nd internal hard drive in your computer that is dedicated for backing up your data. The last option would be to backup your data on the same hard drive that holds the data, the problem worth this option is that if your hard drive fails you may lose all of your data anyway.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that backups are only for technical professionals or large companies, or thinking that I'll back the data up when I have more time. Backups are becoming a necessity for all computer users. Don't get into the mindset of thinking that your computer has been running great for years so there is no need for you to backup your data. More than likely your machine will fail one day through virus attack, user error, or just the age of the machine.

On the day of failure, one of two things will occur. You'll either lose financial information, passwords, music, photos, and all other data files. Or, you a repair or replace the computer and restore from the backups that you've been making. If you choose not to backup your data you will find yourself falling into the first category here which could be a disaster. I you choose to perform external backups you will find yourself in category 2 which can be an annoyance but you will find yourself much happier than if you chose not to backup your data.

There are many different ways to lose data. You could have a hardware failure; your computer could be damaged in a fire or a flood. Your hard drive could receive a power surge during a storm. Your child could accidentally delete some files that you need. You could receive a virus that could infect your system or erase your hard drive.

What should I Backup

It's usually unnecessary to backup every file on your computer for the average user. If you choose to backup every file on your computer this would take a large number of space. At a minimum the average home user should backup personal files, irreplaceable software, spreadsheets, legal documents, work in progress, etc. You should backup any files or software that you think you may need some day in the future.

The easiest way to do backups is to use the backup software which is provided with your windows operating system. The software is easy to use and backing up is a simple matter of selecting the folders to backup. You can even automate the process by using the scheduler so the process is made easier and you just need to ensure you have writable media placed in the eternal location you have chosen to backup to at the time the backup is scheduled to run.

Some data such as emails are more difficult to protect if your ISP doesn’t keep your received and sent emails on their server (the majority of ISP's are now doing this). When this is not an option you should be able to export your messages to a file which in turn the exported file can be backed up.

We recommend your perform daily backups of your data but you know your usage better than anyone so you can adjust the frequency of your backup to fit your needs. Just think how often you modify your files and think would I be ok if I lost this data if something were to happen to my machine between know and my next scheduled backup.

We hope this helps in determining how you are going to handle backing up your data!

Backups, backups, backups...!

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