Find out why there's no reason not to backup your data,

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This may seem quite basic, but it's a key question: What should you back up?

The answer is simple if you're a business. Buy big tape drives and back up absolutely everything all the time. When the inevitable hard drive collapse happens, the system administrator can restore the works in a matter of minutes.

For businesses, where every minute of downtime means dollars lost, that might make sense. But most individuals aren't willing to pay the money or take the time to back up everything all the time.

For the rest of us, there's one essential rule of backing up: Make a copy of anything you can't otherwise replace. In other words, make copies of your personal data.

Don't make copies of Windows or your applications, unless you no longer have the master disks. If your hard drive crashes, you'll have to take a few hours to rebuild the applications from the original program disks, but that's not the end of the world.

Though I talked smack about them above, I still back up using Zip disks. I automate the backup process using a fantastic piece of $30 shareware called Second Copy. It automatically backs up the My Documents folder every week.

I rotate the disks, keeping one at work and one at home. The software also works with CD-RW discs or any kind of removable storage.

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