Back Up Your PC

Do you have digital images and family photos stored on your PC? If you do, what value do you put on the family photos (from the last year, or two, or three)? What if you lost all those photos the next time you went to turn on your PC and it didn't boot up (drive failure etc.)?

Do you have music (iTunes) stored on your PC? How many songs do you have on your PC? 25, 50, 100, 200... 500? At roughly $1.00 per song you can do the math. If your hard drive crashes your songs are gone.

Do you have personal files stored on your PC? Do you have personal files on your PC (MS Word, Excel etc.) that may contain your finances or other type information that should be backed up?

Do you have software installed the required a "license string" to activate it? If you have additional software installed on your PC (MS Office 2007, Adobe products, PaintShop Pro etc.) that required a "license string" for you to enter to activate it and if you didn't have the install executable file (or CD) and license string documented, then that software would be lost and have to be purchased again. Even if you had CDs of your original software, if you didn't have the license string (code) documented then the software would be useless.

First: You need to make sure you are not backing up viruses. Make sure you have a good anti-virus software.

Second: Purchase an external USB hard drive (at least a 320 gig). You can buy these at your major retailers (we recommend eBay), for roughly $70. This is where you will target and store your backup file(s) (you don't want to store backup files on your hard drive).

Third: Purchase Backup software

You have to prepare for PC failure at some point. Your PC is a machine and it's going to fail at some time. Be prepared.