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Our computers have become a necessary part of our lives. We use them for doing work, corresponding with friends and family and even for entertainment. Over time, most computer users create many file that are important documents which could cost both time and money if lost. Data backups are the best way to ensure you don’t lose any of those files.

Many users have made the mistake of thinking backups are only for big companies or computer geeks, or even just thinking they’ll do it when they have time. Unfortunately every single one of those users has either lost data by not having a backup, or they will one day. All computer equipment has a finite lifespan and will fail eventually.

On that day, one of two things will happen. You’ll either suffer the grief that comes with losing financial information, passwords, music collections, personal photographs and all the software you’ve purchased. Or, you can repair or replace the computer and restore from the backups you’ve been making regularly. The latter is an annoyance, the first a disaster.

There are many ways to lose the information on your computer. Besides the obvious hardware failures, there are floods, fire, power surges or even your child unplugging the computer at the wrong moment. Your computer could also be infected by a virus or spyware that wipes everything out.

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 Should You Be Backing Up?

For the average user, it’s usually not necessary to backup every file on the computer, which would require large storage space. But at bare minimum home users should backup personal files and irreplaceable software. Spreadsheets with financial records not easily available from other sources, legal documents, work-in-progress… the list is large.

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

The easiest system for backing up your data is to just use the software that’s included with most modern operating systems. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all include quite capable backup software. You just need to select the files and folders you want to backup and get it started. Many of these programs will even let you schedule the backup to run at a time you won’t be using your computer.

If you want something with more features, there are plenty of programs you can purchase. These paid versions often include additional features, such as the ability to backup only the files that have changed since the last backup was done.

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.

You can backup your information to almost any kind of removable media - removable hard drives, writable CDs or DVDs or even the USB memory sticks that are so common these days. In a pinch you may even be able to fall back on the old floppy disk. Documents don’t take a lot of space and often fit into a small storage area.

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.

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