{mosgoogle}How often should I back up?

Think of this question another way – if my hard disk crashed, or I dropped my laptop, or it got stolen at the airport, how much time will it take me to re-create the active data that I just lost? What would it cost you to lose a day’s worth of data and to recreate it? How much time would it take to reconfigure your computer with the tools, configurations, short cuts, and links that you have spent years accumulating? Remember the Computer World data, the average cost per laptop for lost data is $800.00 per year. What is your billing rate? How much will it cost you to start over?

Some of us use our computers the entire day. That means that if we back up daily, then the most time that we would spend redoing the work would be less than a day’s worth of time. If you are an occasional user, then you may need to backup less frequently.

Once you have made your list, then you are ready to back up. Here is my partial list of backup files that would cause me great pain if they were not backed up:

• Outlook.pst - Emails, Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar
• My Documents - Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Quickbooks
• Favorites (these are my Internet bookmarks that I have spent years building up)
• Documents and Settings/user/application data (be selective here. You will most likely not need temporary files generated from web pages).
• Goldmine data files and email attachments