Safe gaurd data, Be sure to Back it up!

I can't stress how important computer data is worth to us all, especially people like myself who's bread and butter is on a computer. Computers have grown on us all over the years as they have been a means of making certain things in life easier. So saying that it's not hard to realize that losing important computer data can in fact ruin a big group of us.

It's overwhelming to think that your data could be lost at anytime. We rely on our computers to store our precious data but these machines are known to fail from time to time. Though computer systems have been improved and have advanced tremendously over the years, but it is still very possible to lose data no matter how good the computer is. They are machines made by man, and men make mistakes, so it's impossible for man to build the perfect computer.

However, there are ways to prevent data loss. You can take steps to preventing losing precious data and the most obvious and easiest way, is to back it up and keep backing it up. Depending on how important your data is will determine how often you should make backups. If it's that important I'd recommend making daily backups, though most will likely only make weekly backups. But it is possible to buy software that can backup data for you, or you could setup a bunch of cheap hard drives in a RAID array.

Some people might still backup small bits of data day to day, using floppy disks. But this probably isn't good enough. What you need to be doing is making full backups of your hard drive on a regular basis. Another way to backup data would be to burn files to a DVD/CD or even a dual layer DVD. There are programs that can do this for you such as acronis true image and norton ghost. These programs will make a backup of your entire hard drive and you can either store that backup on another hard drive or you can select another option such as burning the backup to a CD/DVD. The best thing about these programs is that not only do they back up your data but they also backup the operating system. Meaning that if you restore a backup it will actually restore the operating system with all your settings and programs. These programs aren't free but they are well worth the investment if you're worried about data loss.

So backing up your data could be for personal reasons or it could be for business, either way you can't go wrong with backing it up. Make sure you backup data correctly too as even this can go pear shaped. There's nothing more frustrating than a backup that wasn't made properly and then not realizing this until after data has corrupted and then you get your backup, try to restore but the backup is corrupt also. A very bad situation to be in and trust me, i should know I've been there...