Do you know how to back up important computer files?

It's likely you use your computer for a variety of things: entertainment, organization, communication and shopping. And this is why you want to make sure you don't lose anything on it.

• Anyone with a computer needs to know to "transcend the hardware." What this means is that all of your data should exist independently of your computer so it will be safe even in the undesirable event that the computer is destroyed.
• For businesses that have only one computer, back up onto an external hard drive with more capacity than the computer's on-board hard drive.
• These drives are cheap insurance, and they can be programmed to automatically back up all your data once every day so that you don't even have to think about it.One of the more painful lessons that most computer users learn is the need to backup important files onto removable media.

  Always remember:

• Sadly, we all too often only see the value of backing up our essential data after it has been lost in a hard drive failure or system crash.
• The fact that backing up is a simple process that usually takes a minute or two only adds to that pain. You don't need to copy all the files on your system, just the ones you can't afford to lose.
• Be sure to back up immediately after you save your data — do not put it off for another time!
• There are fewer excuses than ever not to copy your files these days, because there's a wealth of removable and easily portable media to choose from: recordable and rewritable CDs and DVDs, removable USB (keychain or flash) drives, even most digital music players can be used to store data files.
• You'll probably want to back up your back ups if you have material you want to save that's currently on floppy or Zip disk. New PC systems won't have the capacity to read these.