You can skip these backup guidelines and do not backup if you have never misedited a file and saved, deleted a file by mistake or have never had to recover from a hard disk crash, a virus, a computer theft or other similar computer disaster.

Probably, you may even think that you do not need to backup. And you may be right, if you are so lucky. If you are not so lucky or wish to further improve your security and file recovery, you can check out this article.

So what is the solution to prevent data loss?

The answer is simple: backup.

Once you backup all your important files, be it documents, Outlook or Outlook Express mail files, images, video or music files, etc., you will be able to recover your files easily no matter what happened to them.

If you backup to an external backup medium (like CD, DVD, an external hard disk or a flash USB drive), you can move the medium anywhere for it to be safe and recover your files pretty easily. Also, you can use an extra backup medium to move the files from on computer to another for various reasons: to keep them safe, to work with files or to hand them over to a friend for collaboration.

If you backup to a remote location (an FTP or WebDAV server), you can access your files from anyplace on the planet with the Internet access. Basically this means if you are using a laptop and backed up to a remote FTP server, you can recover your files wherever you are, provided you are connected to the Internet.

If the importance of backup and easy file recovery has not yet become obvious, you may well conider ways to prevent the need to backup by increasing your file security by excellent proficiency. However, if you are unsure, whether you will succeed in this, feel free to backup.