Sooner or later, it happens to everyone. Your hard drive crashes, taking all your data with it. Or you press the wrong key and inadvertently delete a group of files you meant to move. Or you accidentally save a new file using the same name as an old one, wiping out an irreplaceable document in the process.

You can avoid the worst data disasters if you get into the habit of backing up regularly. Backing up is tedious work and not much fun but the following is a way that makes backing up your data as painless as possible.

If you’re like most people, your documents are scattered all over your hard drive, in an assortment of folders and subfolders. That makes it difficult to tell if you’ve actually saved all your important files when you perform a backup.

On my computer I have created a handful of folders, each one dedicated to storing a particular type of file.

My Documents - Use the My Documents folder for groups of files you open or edit regularly-letters, reports, worksheets, and so on. You can then backup the entire folder with confidence.

Old Documents - Create this folder to hold data files you need to keep but no longer open regularly, such as letters and invoices you wrote last year. Moving these files out of the My Documents folder makes it easier to backup your current files often, without cluttering up your backup with old files.

Mail Messages - Every email program stores your messages and addresses in a different location. If you use the most recent version of Outlook Express, you can move your messages into the “My Documents” folder, where it’s easy to back them up.

Downloaded Programs - Whenever you download a new program from the Internet, don’t just put it on the desktop. If you create a special folder for programs, you’ll find it much easier to reinstall them later.

Hardware Drivers - If you ever have to reformat your hard disk and reinstall Windows from scratch, imagine what a hassle it will be to find the most current driver for every piece of hardware you’ve installed. Now imagine how much easier that task will be if you have those driver files all in one folder that you’ve backed up to a Zip disk or a CD.

Which backup software should you use to protect your data? The simplest backup technique is simply copying files to a safe place. Open an Explorer window, select the icon for the folder you want to back up, and drag it onto the icon for your floppy drive. This technique works well if you have a Zip drive or a CD-RW drive.

If you want to schedule a backup to occur automatically or at regular intervals you’ll need the $79 Backup Exec Desktop 4.5, or the Simple Backup 2.2 program which is $39. Both are produced by Veritas www.veritas.com/us/products/ . If you have a CD-R, you should also consider Adaptec’s Take Two www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/t2features.html  program, which is included with “Easy CD Creator Deluxe 4.0”.

SET UP A BACKUP SCHEDULE (AND STICK TO IT)

Daily: Set your backup software to perform an backup of all the files that you created or changed that day. Even if you’ve had an incredibly busy and productive day, this task should only take a few minutes.

Weekly: Do a complete backup of all the files in your “My Documents” folder. Ideally, you should rotate between two or more sets of backup media (disks or tape) so that you can recover a file from several weeks back if your system becomes infected with a virus. The full backup should take no more than an hour.

Every month or two: Clean out your My Documents folder, moving files you no longer work with into an archive folder. Then backup the data in that folder.

Ok, so you’ve got all your data files organized, and you’re ready to run your backup program. But where are you planning to store those files?

Regular floppy disks just won’t hold enough data. Tape drives are made for backups, of course, with capacities ranging from 20MB all the way up to 50GB. Two big problems with tape drives are cost and complexity.

For everyday use, Zip drives (with a capacity of up to 250MB per disk) are a great choice. CD-R and CD-RW disks, with a 650MB capacity, also make excellent storage media for backups.

With especially valuable data, like tax files or accounting records for your business you need to make certain your data is truly safe. Don’t leave those backup disks or tapes sitting next to your computer. Store them in a safe place-a safe deposit box or a locked file cabinet at your office.

If you don’t have special hardware you may wish to consider backing up your most important files to an online storage website.

Places like Blue Eye Technologies www.computerdatastorage.com  offer online data storage for $18 a month and can even provide your files on CD if you need to replace your lost data.

Other online and off site data storage information can be found here:

NovaStor www.novastor.com/ 

NetMass www.systemrestore.com/ 

If you can spare 10 minutes a week, you can backup your files and upload them to a safe location on the Internet. Make it part of your weekly routine and you won’t have to worry about data disasters ever again.