It may not have happened to you yet, but someday you will lose data. If you have already experienced loss of data then you know the frustration that goes along with not having a fresh back up. Still most PC users gamble with this and do not back up their data regularly.

In if you're running Windows XP or 2000 you need to backup your C:\Documents and settings folder, if you're using Vista, you need to backup the C:\users folder.

Which files should you back up? - Anything and everything that is important to you, typically this means any word, excel or other office type document that you've created, your past tax returns that you did yourself on your system and are still on your hard drive. If you run a business of your own you probably have plenty of information that needs to be backed up. MP3s you've purchased and downloaded, video files, movies, games, PST archives etc.

Usually the best practice is to perform a complete system back up, such as a disk image. This will help you recover much easier if your system crashes and needs to be rebuilt.

The best time to create an image of your system is when you first reinstall windows and install all your applications and configure everything that needs to be configured and running.

One common good practice when you initially setup your system, is to use a secondary drive for your data, rather than dump everything on the C: Drive. If you can't afford a second drive, you could partition the local drive into two partitions, where you'd have drive C: and drive D:, where you would install the windows OS on the C: driver and your applications and data on the D: drive.

You could take it even a step further by partitioning your local drive into three partitions and using the third partition for your data only. Obviously this is only feasible if you have a big enough drive of at least 100GB.

Ideally you would want to put your important files on a separate internal or external drive and have an your backups occur automatically by a schedule that you set via a program like Acronis True Image or DT Utilities PC Backup Pro.

Another option users have available today is "Online Backups". These are fairly new to consumers though the technology has been around and implemented by large enterprises and Government agencies mostly. Online backups are a great option as they can also be scheduled and most importantly the important data is stored offsite in a remote server and away from its original source (your PC).

Implementing a backup system has huge benefits, no matter which method you choose, it's important to have one even it means just copying files to CD or DVD. It will save you a lot of hearbreak and tears.