Computer users seem to only learn about backup when their computers crash! Oops, too late!!! Well... maybe... In this article I will show you many ways to backup your data and programs to protect yourself from any catastrophe such as virus / malware attacks to hardware failures. Backing up your computer is easy if you are just willing to learn how to do it. I will mainly talk about three types of backups. Simple data backups are backups which will basically only back up your documents and pictures. A complete backup which will backup everything on your computer and a disaster recovery backup, which will allow you to be up and running in minutes or hours instead of days. The type of backup you do will depend on a few things: Convenience, Safe Keeping and being Mission Critical.

Convenience Backup:

This is they type of backup that you make to keep a copy of your documents and pictures for safe keeping and sharing. You can do one of the following techniques to accomplish this task: Zip the files and keep them on a Flash Drive, CD/DVD or External Hard Disk. This technique is very simple and you can use WinZip, WinRar or a few other applications to compress your data for storage as one or more files depending on your storage area. This is a simplistic approach and not for protection for if the archive file is damaged you risk loosing all or part of your saved data. The next technique is to copy the files to your chosen storage device if it is large enough to accommodate the data. You should have multiple rotating backup media so that you always have at least on backup prior to the last one.

Safe Keeping Backup:

This backup starts out like the convenience backup but as you rotate your backup media you then need to keep it off-site, possibly in a safe deposit box or fire proof safe so that in the event of you erasing your data or just losing it for some reason you can just go get the backup then restore the missing data. The safe keeping backup media will also include the convenience backup media and other media such as tape backup or FTP-ing an archive to a website for storage.

Disaster Recovery Backup:

This type of backup is basically for mission critical operations but can be used just as well as any other type of backup. This backup requires that you purchase an external drive of the same type (ATA/SCSI/SATA) and size in gigabytes (or larger) as the one you have in your computer and an external enclosure to hold the drive. You would then create a image backup of your hard drive (Acronis True Image) to the external drive for storage of  this drive off-site and possibly in a fireproof safe. The external drive will be a mirror image of the drive you are using in your computer and if for some reason your hard drive fails all you need to do is to retrieve your external drive and replace the damaged drive with this one and you will be up and running without loss of data or programs (since the last backup) in minutes or hours depending on your expertise with replacing a hard disk. You should keep rotating media for this backup also so you will have at least two external drives to backup to. This is the type of backup I use and refer to others, it's easy to do and all your files remain in the same locations that you are used to. If you need a file or two all you need to do is to connect the drive to your computer than drag and drop the file from the external drive and you are done.