Back it up.

I recently moved, so I was off line for a few months. before moving I had copied some pictures, scripts to speeches etc in case anything happened to my computer during the move. I would have backed up more but I didn't have the storage space or time.

For a few months before I moved I had been looking at purchasing a large hard drive to back up my computer on. These hard drives can be found for under a hundred dollars, and have enough space to back up most peoples computers many, many times over. You set up your computer to back up automaticly and dont have to think about it. However, I needed paint and other supplies to make my house look a little better and hopefully get top dollar for the home.

Soon after arriving at my new home my computer crashed. I have my most important pictures saved (family and friends) but have lost others. My wife lost school assignments and other material she would have liked to save.

I can't replace what I have lost. Rebuilding my favorites etc on the computer is going to take months.

Learn from my mistake, back up your computer. If you have children away from home then perhaps buy them a large hard drive for Christmas. You wont know what a pain this is until it happens to you.


Eric

I had a hard drive crash in the last couple of weeks. While I didn't buy one yet, I found a 650 GB external hard drive by Western Digital for under $100 new with backup software. It make sense to have something like this.

Eric...you've probably already checked this out but when I had a crash...without backup...a computer shop was able to retrieve most of my stuff with their special software.

And yes, since then I have gone to backing up with an external hard drive using a program called Acronis which is one of those that restores the entire hard drive including the operating system.