One major source of procrastination in the area of backing up personal or business data stems from creating a complex mental picture in one's mind of what you think you have to do: Buy a stack of rewriteable CD'S, label them, buy the best Backup Software, run through an inventory of your complete hard drive, in order to determine what to back up.

Just take some kind of action - doing this is so much more important than trying to be Captain Organized. Write down 5 things you do with your PC that results in crucial files you would never want to lose. This is your first micro-step. You're now done with the first portion of this task and you can reward yourself.

The next step is to find some empty space on a second hard drive (this is definitely preferred to having a diskette, and second hard drives are cheap). Create a folder on this physically separate hard drive and name this folder: "Email Backup". (this is one of the five things above that you discovered you wouldn't want to lose)

You now have a dedicated place to back up your email files (in the case of Outlook, for instance, this would be *.PST). Now Google for "XCOPY" and Batch File, and use that information to write yourself a simple *.bat file that copies your email files to that folder at least weekly. Your reward at this point can be more extravagant.

You're basically done with a minimalist backup solution for now - you can then add additional Xcopy commands for other very important key files.

Don't go drawing the conclusion that the perfect and responsible backup system has to necessarily involve a complete backing up of all software on a hard drive. The files that you create, with your mind and your time, are the crucial types of information you want to back up, and back up now. Not ZIP files of old teleseminar MP3 files you've already listened to.

Your List of Important Files May Include The Following

    * Ad Copy Sales Letters

    * CSS/HTML/PHP/Javascript code files

    * A Masters Thesis

    * A collection of Photoshop files for your client

    * Your emails: follow the file/export directions for whatever email client you're using, and then export those to another physical medium

    * Your browser bookmarks

    * Your website files on your local drive (I don't consider my web host provider to be an official backup)

If you're a developer and spent hours on a single source file containing Java or C, I don't have to remind you of the need for the slightest move toward a responsible routine of backing up (if you're not already doing this or using a source control system).

The minor task of making duplicates of important files to another hard drive or a diskette that you leave sitting around may not necessarily help in the event of theft or fire; however, even taking this simple action of making a copy has personally helped me in instances such as this:

- I once accidentally clicked the wrong button in WS FTP and copied over changes to a local file instead of uploading this file. No problem - I had a copy of that file in a dedicated backup folder on my second hard drive. This is one of the "Overlooked reasons" mentioned in the title... simple user error that happens to everyone with a devastating result - not a hardware crash or incidence of theft.

In summary, think:

Small and Important Files Regularly Backed Up Now.

Prevention Is Easy When All You've Got To Do is Copy A File. The rest can come later.

Don't revert to Perfectionism Mode and then start searching in Google or Yahoo after reading this article, for more info on backing up Outlook or something similar. You will inevitably come across commercial applications that promise to "revolutionize the way all of your software works" - you're already distracted at this point and the odds are that you won't get to your non-Email related files I mentioned above, such as important spreadsheet documents, and other files listed above.

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Steve Bailey has enjoyed working in the I.T. field, whether as an employee or independently, since the late 80's. For software-related articles, tutorials and reviews, visit his site. Also, available, is a notification sign-up form for free ftp program.

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