There’s nothing more frustrating than a losing all the information on your computer because of a computer crash or a virus. A few years ago, I was working on a bunch of songs that I wanted to eventually put together to make an album. I worked on the music for about 6 months on my computer when, one day, my computer wouldn’t turn on.

Panic.

The hard drive failed and I lost all my work, pictures, music and essays that I had sitting on there for years. The ironic thing is, I was actually thinking of backing up my files a few weeks before the crash happened. If there is one warning I’ll give you, it’s that you can never predict when a hard drive is going to fail or when a computer virus is going to nuke your hard drive. Fortunately there are programs out there that can help save that valuable information, which can also save you a lot of wasted time/money trying to put everything back.

The best software that I’ve used is Acronis True Image. This brilliant little software can even back up your entire hard drive and Operating System. The best thing about this is that if you have an extra hard drive to spare, you can ‘clone’ your existing hard drive so that you have an identical copy. When the first hard drive fails, all you have to do is switch the drives and it will boot up just the same!

After I had done what I consider a ‘major backup’ with Acronis, I would invest in a stack of DVD-R’s and schedule ‘mini backup sessions’ and put any newly downloaded or created files on those discs when the data became sizable enough (3-4Gigabytes) to merit being burned onto DVD [CD-R’s work well for smaller data backups].

To keep track of newly acquired files just create a new folder say, “Pictures-Summer 2008” this will help you know what is new on your hard drive and what already exists on the cloned one. For the truly diligent or paranoid a little USB drive can ensure you copy a file as soon as it lands on your hard drive. I must admit, I have copies in triplicate of certain files that it would kill me to lose and no, they are not stashed at the four corners of the Earth…

The new Macs offer something called Time Machine as part of their new Leopard OS. A friend of mine is gaga over it, but I haven’t looked into it that much. I know I have my own system of backing up files that works for me, but drop a line in the Comments below and let me know if you have found a way that may be better or more efficient, maybe Time Machine works for you, or maybe you want to start a support group for those still mourning the loss of their precious data. That is, if one doesn’t already exist…