Back it up or get a smack down!

We remind our readers all the time to back up their drives. It can't be stressed enough. We joke about it, saying we will personally stop by your house as the Smack Fairy. And believe us, we would leave you with red cheeks. Which cheeks? You decide ;-) But in all seriousness, if your hard drive fails you, or a nasty virus leaves your data inaccessible, you'll be praying for a smack down instead. It is just a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling when you lose all those precious family photos, school documents, resumes, and other irreplaceable data.

Not including fans, hard drives are the only major component in your computer that has moving, mechanical parts. Sometimes you are given warnings before they go bad and sometimes it's a sudden disaster. And, all too often, the data is not recoverable. Even when it is recoverable, the recovery cost is often thousands of dollars.

In recent years, many USB devices are making it even easier to back up your files. Burning to a CD used to be the method of choice. Now, you can save photos and music on USB thumb drives, iPods, or media players. Also, full disk backups are easy to do on external drives, especially since most companies include backup programs right on the drive.

So now there is no good excuse to avoid repeated backups. If you come crying to us, we will try to help. But if you didn't do your backups, be prepared for a smack down.. or a friendly "We told you so."