For many people, computers have become a daily necessity. We use them for work, for correspondence and for entertainment. Many of the files are important documents and losing them would cost us time and money. Backups are the best way to prevent their permanent loss.

Many people think of backups as something large companies or computer geeks do. Or they might plan on doing it when the get the chance. Every one of those people has either already lost data due to some kind of problem with their system or they will one day. Every piece of computer equipment has a lifespan and is going to fail one day or another.

When that failure occurs, one of two things will happen. If you have a backup, you’ll restore it back onto your repaired computer or a replacement. If you don’t, you’ll be pulling your hair out over the lost files, music, digital photos and all the other stuff you store on your machine.

There are, unfortunately, an infinite variety of ways to lose data. Besides hardware failure, computers can be destroyed in fires or floods. Hard drives can be damaged by power surges caused by lightning strikes or data lost by a child randomly hitting the keyboard. Viruses can infect systems and erase hard drives.

Having that data stored in a backup is often the only way to get it back. And even if it can be recovered by a data recovery service, it can cost thousands of dollars for them to do the work.

What to Backup?

Most people don’t actually have to backup every single file on their computer. This can require a large amount of storage and can take a long time. The critical things to backup are all the files you have created and any software that cannot be replaced. Financial records, word processing documents, legal files - the list goes on and on.

The list can go on and on, but the backup doesn’t need to.

The easiest way to backup your files is to use the software that comes with most operating systems. Windows includes one, as does Mac OS X, Linux and others. These programs are usually pretty straightforward and it’s just a matter of selecting the files and folders you want to save. Many of them can even be scheduled to run in the middle of the night or some other time you’re not using your computer.

If you want something a little more powerful, there are a number of backup program you can purchase. These programs offer features such as only backing up files that have changed since the last backup, or those that have changed since a particular date.

Some files are a little tougher to backup, such as email. Some email software stores the messages on the server instead of on your computer. In those cases, you can usually save the messages into a file on your computer that can then be backed up.

Backups can be saved to almost any type of drive or media - writable CD’s, DVD’s, USB memory sticks or removable hard drives for example. If you’re really stuck you might even be able to backup your files to a floppy disk. Word processing documents and spreadsheets don’t take up very much space at all.

Having to run a backup every day may seem like a pain in the neck, but you’ll be glad you made the time on the day your computer crashes and you need a file that got wiped out.