In this segment, we're going to talk about why you need to Back Up Regularly, or Risk Losing Everything

Why Back Up?

Something I've seen over and over again in the years I've been helping people with computers are computer users – both at home and at work – who never back up their files.

This is a really bad idea, and if you're guilty of this, I suggest you make a point to start regularly backing up your files. Let me explain why.

As you may know, every file on your computer – from photos, to music, to email, all of your programs, and even Windows or Mac OS X – everything is stored on a part of your computer called the hard drive.

Hard drives are the best technology available to us right now to store files on a computer, but unfortunately they can break down for a lot of reasons. Because of this, pretty much every hard drive will fail eventually (anything in a computer can break down, but the hard drive is one of the most common parts to go), and when this happens, chances are some or all of the files on the drive will be lost.

Unfortunately most people learn this lesson the hard way, myself included! Years ago, when I was fresh out of high school, I still owned my first computer which was already least a few years old by then.

One day I was using my computer when I started hearing a clicking noise from inside the case, and suddenly couldn't open my files -- my computer's hard drive was breaking down!

I quickly realized what was going on and started copying my files as fast as I could to floppy disks (this is long before CD burners ).

Hours later, after I don't know how many floppies, and after hitting "retry" over and over and over, I managed to scrape maybe half of my important files off the drive before it completely fell apart.

I was devastated: I'd lost so much of my early writing (short stories I wrote for myself, plus school work) and a lot of other important work.

Imagine the most important things you keep on your computer. I don't know if this would be your favorite memories in the form of pictures or home videos, important writing, like emails or Word documents, critical financial records – imagine what it would feel like to watch all of those irreplaceable things just go up in smoke right before your eyes.

I'm a writer, and I lost at least half of my early writing, which I still miss sometimes, over sixteen years later!

And I was lucky!

I have seen so many people bring their computers to me with a failing or dead hard drive. I've worked on their computers and in some cases I was able to get their files, but a lot of times it was just too late.

They lost everything.

And people don't just lose files because of bad hard drives!

Other times, people lose files due to viruses, a young kid playing around on their computer, or even by accidentally erasing something themselves.

The results can be stressful and upsetting if this happens on a personal computer, but it can be fatal to a business: according to the Gartner Group, an IT research company, the estimate is that "43 percent of businesses fail... following a major disaster and 29 percent fail within the first two to four months."

And believe me, for a business – and for a lot of home users who keep their tax records, loan info, and other critical financial information on their computer – losing your files can truly be a major disaster.

But it's so easy to avoid.

If all those people had just taken a few minutes to back up their files on a regular basis, at worst they would've lost a few days' worth of work, or as little as a few hours – however long it was since their last backup!

OK, so that covers why you need to back up, but you may be wondering how to back up. There are a number of ways to go, some better, some worse than others. I have a strategy anyone can follow that gives you the best chance of avoiding the loss I've just talked about.

But that's the subject of a different article.