Establish a Backup Routine

It's easy to forget about keeping a backup of your important data. In the event of hardware failure or compromise of the computer your hard work may be gone forever. With the advent of inexpensive writable CDs there is no excuse for not keeping a weekly backup copy of your data!

Windows XP includes a simple backup utility it will not write to CD drives. You can manually create a backup on your hard drive and then copy it to the CD drive. Backup details can be found in Microsoft's Windows XP Backup Made Easy article. If you keep financial data or other sensitive information on your computer, password protecting the backup and storing it in a secure location is also a good idea.

Windows Vista includes the Backup and Restore Center. This utility allows you to backup files to a CD. You can also create a restore image. Microsoft recommends doing this every six months. For more information, read the Backup Your Data Periodically section of the Securing Your Windows Vista Computer document.

There are several commercial backup utilities are available for Macintosh, such as Dantz Retrospect. For mac.com users, Apple's Backup utility is available. You can also find more information on manually backing up data onto media (CD, Zip, etc.) at San Francisco State University's website.