What to Back Up?
Backups: this is the most important step you can take towards protecting your computer. Data is the reason you own a computer. Maybe you're a writer and you're generating is .doc (Word) files. Or an accountant, in which case you'd be generating proprietary data files like .qbw's (Quickbooks). Or perhaps you are the casual home user who's basic use is email and surfing the web, in which case you'd be generating emails, an address book, some favorites and pictures.
Why Back Up?
Whatever the reason you're using a computer, data is your work. Work that
can be lost in the blink of an eye. Maybe you're using a laptop, which are
prone to be stolen or lost. Computer hardware is notoriously flakey and
harddrives only last for so long. There's a myriad of reasons for doing
backups.
Never take the integrity of your data for granted. Never! Recently I had
a client tell me his whole life was on a failed hard drive. And he had no
backup. Fortunately, I was able to recover his data. But as often as not,
data recovery fails short of spending thousands and thousands of dollars.
How to Do It
There's a myriad of reasons for doing backups. And there's a number of ways to do them. It might be as simple as manually copying some files and folders to a CD or flash (usb) drive. In a commercial environment which use numerous apps, a full-fledged backup program would copy whole computers on specialized tape drives. Fortunately for home and SOHO (small office/home office) users, there's some nice freeware out there that will let you automatically back it up once you're set up. Flash (usb) drives have made small backups a snap.