It started with a terrible shriek. Then a moan. A few loud thumps. A groan. Then silence. It came from the office next door. Carefully peeking around the corner, I ventured a quiet, “Is everything all right?” “No… no… no. It’s gone. All gone. Just gone!” came the reply. From the blank stare at her computer screen, it all became clear: She had just lost an important file. And she didn’t have a backup.

You’ve probably heard it all before: backup your files frequently or you’ll be sorry. It’s easy, though, to become complacent. Today’s technology is far more reliable than in the past. Hard drive crashes, while still heard of, are rare. Accidents – a dropped laptop, a spilled coffee cup – happen, but more rugged materials make serious damage less likely nowadays. Even virus attacks – while probably more of a threat to your files than hardware malfunctions – are fairly manageable with anti-everything software.

But it still happens. Maybe it’s an accidental keystroke; maybe it’s a hardware crash. One way or the other, the odds are still against you. One of these days, you’re going to lose an important file, maybe many. When that happens, you’re going to scream.

Or maybe you won’t – if you’ve been diligent about backing up your files regularly. Unlike the old days, when backing up meant flipping hundreds of floppy disks, or dozens of zip disks, or even fighting with tape drives, backing up today is really a piece of cake. The hardest part of backing up your files is not the technology – but the biology: Remembering to do it!

There are many strategies for backing up. From making copies on a CD to automatic network storage, consider your strategy for making backups before that fateful day approaches.

The CDROM: Perhaps the easiest way to backup important files today is to use your writable CD drive. Having successfully replaced the floppy disk as the ubiquitous media of our times, the CD-ROM can store 650 MB of files on one disk, which is easy to store in a fire-resistant media safe or to carry offsite. For most users, 650 MB of storage space should provide ample space for the “most” important files in their system: the irreplaceable stuff like their Outlook file, business contracts, presentation files and latest marketing materials. The key is to regularly backup those files that would take a lot of time to recreate, and would substantially halt your day-to-day business activities if they suddenly disappeared. Items like property photos, music files, infrequently used documents or flyers have less “daily-vital” impact on your business, so you can probably risk backing them up infrequently – or not at all.

On a weekly basis, though, backing up your vital files means that at any given time, should a file become damaged or lost, you would only be a few days behind by restoring the week-old backup. Restoring week-old Outlook or Quicken files means you’d only be missing the last few days of new emails and replies; and in some cases, files like presentations and marketing pieces probably change even less frequently, so restoring week-old versions of them would put you back in business right away.

The Memory Stick: A newer, smaller backup method is to copy vital files to a USB memory stick, also known as a flash drive. With capacities as large as 4 GB (almost seven times larger than a CDROM) flash drives make backups easy: just drag-and-drop files from your PC onto the flash drive icon located under My Computer. The process is similar to backing up to a CDROM, except that you don’t have to “burn” the files to the flash drive: they are automatically written to the drive when you drag them over. Even better, flash drives are super fast: They can write data at lightning speeds, making them effective for backing up thousands of megabytes of data at once. Perhaps their best feature is that they are “re-writable” in real time – you can drag files on and off of the flash drive in real time, without having to reformat or reburn them at slower speeds. The USB interface of a flash drive also makes them ideal for real disasters: if your laptop is stolen, you can just pop the USB drive onto any other PC with a USB drive and instantly access your files without any special programs or software. By combining large storage capacities and small sizes (nothing is more convenient than carrying 4GB of backup storage on your keychain), flash drives are the easiest way to make backups for most users with one or two PCs. They’re also extremely inexpensive.

Automated Network Storage: Backing up one or two computers is easy with a CDROM or flash drive, but what about office managers who need strategies for protecting files on many computers networked together? Running around backing up each PC with a CD or memory stick could take hours each week, making it likely that it wouldn’t get done at all. For these kinds of situations, what’s needed is an automated, large capacity backup solution that regularly protects all computers on the network without any attention by users. Products like the Mirra Personal Server (www.mirra.com), Buffalo LinkStaton and Maxtor OneTouch series all provide automated, network-ready backups for a few hundred dollars. Essentially, these storage “appliances” are connected to your network router and a software program is loaded onto each computer on the network. Users can select those folders they wish to be backed up, and the software then monitors them in real-time for changes and updates. Whenever a file in any selected folder changes – or is modified in any way – the software immediately sends a copy to the network backup server for safekeeping. Rather than backing up each computer at a pre-selected time each week, backup servers perform real-time-safekeeping for every file and folder on the network. In fact, most of these devices can be configured to keep the last fifteen versions of the selected files, so that users can actually “go back” to earlier versions if a later one becomes corrupt or they wish to “undo” changes they had successively saved. Most network backup appliances have huge storage capacities – 200-500 GB is normal, considering that a few GB of data will be backed up from multiple computers and only get bigger over time.

The only downside to network backups is that while they protect files against viruses, hardware malfunction and user error, they do not ever leave the office. Network backup appliances can be destroyed by fire or water damage just like any other part of the office in a disaster. So most users create more “portable” backups (on CDROM or memory stick) at least once a quarter as a second-layer of protection against the worst possible of file loss.

Whether you backup on CDROM, flash drive or file storage appliance, the key to successful data protection is making file copies frequently. While network appliances backup in real time, a more likely strategy is weekly for individual users. Safekeeping for backup media – such as a fire-resistant safe or taking media off site – should also be factored into the process. According to studies by American Data Recovery (http://www.adrdatarecovery.com), a company that specializes in data protection and restoration, 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more filed for bankruptcy within one year. So how long would you last if you lost some important files and had to start all over again?