Backup Your Hard Drives: It is a good habit.

Backing up of a computer's files is something that should be done on a regular basis. Unfortunately, not very many of us do this.

I have two usb portable drives on my system as well as one firewire drive. I backed up several months ago and a fresh backup is long overdue.

USB portable drives are an excellent media for backing up due to the portability of the drive. For example, if you have a hard drive crash, a backup would be essential to a recovery of your files. With a restore from backup, you would only lose items that had changed since the last backup. Software exists at a very reasonable price that only backs up the files that have changed since last backup. With this, one could backup every night or 3 times a week, or any frequency you choose.

If you buy a new computer, using your backup, you could move all of your files such as photos, spreadsheet, Quicken financial data, etc from the backup to the new system for a painless changeover.

I managed the programmers for IBM at the Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center (A part of FAA's nationwide air traffic system.) Backups were made constantly and one set of backup was kept off premises about 3 miles away. This was to ensure that all records were secure in the event of a major disaster. We never had to use it but it was there. I suspect the "never used it" scenario is why most people fail to backup. You don't need it until some disaster befalls you and then you urgently need it. There is a reason hard drives are called "hard"...when they fail, it is indeed hard. Mean-time-to-failure of a hard drive is 5 years. It is going to happen sooner or later and then you will be glad you have backed up to a USB portable drive.