More Tips on How to Make Backups

I get more questions on computer backups than just about any other topic, so I'm always happy to run across another online source that offers tips and advice on how and when to do your backups.

Tech Hints offers a good primer on backups, especially noteworthy in two parts:

First, it does a good job showing you what files are important, and where those files reside on your PC. (Hint: It's not just as easy as backing up the My Documents folder.)

Second, it gets you thinking about how often you should do your backups. The critical question here is getting you to put a value on a day's worth of work and comparing that to the cost of backing up a day's worth of data. Are you willing to risk a day, a week, or a month to avoid the time it would take to make a backup? For most of us, daily (or nightly, rather) backups make the most sense.

I am not familiar with the guide's suggestion of BeInSync for a backup utility, but I've talked about GoodSync, Cobian, and Mozy in the past, all of which are great solutions for backups in various formats and at prices that start at nada.

Check out the Tech Hints story, and get your backups going tonight!