Backing Up Your Data

A guy I work with recently had the hard drive crash on the family computer and they lost many family photos, personal documents and music.  If you still are not backing up your files (music, pictures, etc.) you are running the risk of losing everything.  Hard drives are dirt cheap these days and there are a number of options out there for you.  Also, if you have a bit of technical knowledge and an old hard drive laying around, you can purchase an external hard drive enclosure for it and use that as your backup drive.  I am using a Venus DS3 hard drive enclosure and an old hard drive.  In conjunction with this setup I am using Microsoft's free "synchronization" utility called SyncToy.  It's very simple to use.

Another option it to purchase an external drive that has built-in backup software such as Western Digital's Passport drives.  These drives are portable and have password protection.  At around $80 for 320 GB of storage that'll backup plenty of stuff!