In order to back up your system, you will need a backup device. Some people use Zip or Jazz drives, others use tape drives, write able CD drives, or other removable cartridge systems. I know it sounds expensive, but compared with cost of losing your valuable data forever, each of these is cheap.

I've found that best all-around product for backup is Backup Exec. This product requires a tape drive, as do most other third-party backup solutions. Backup Exec is preferred because it can be made totally automatic and is one of top-rated products industry-wide. If you want to back up to other media, though, you'll do best to stick with backup software that comes with media.

An important fact that I've noticed about backup is that you have to make it a part of your normal routine. Even if you have automated backups set up and working perfectly, you must check them constantly. If you don't you will find yourself without a backup when you need it most! My advice is to try restoring files from your backup occasionally when you don't need it so you are ready and are sure you have good backups when you do need them.

Or you could have mice (the animals) in your house. Mice love to create nests in warm places, and your computer is pretty warm. Just imagine all those little teeth gnawing away on all of wires ...

Worse yet, imagine it rains and a leak appears directly over your hard drive ... or your "friend" spills coffee on CPU cabinet. I could go on and on about what could happen to your computer.

I don't know about you, but I spend more time on my home computer than I do watching television, reading, eating or anything else except possibly working at my day job. When my computer has a problem, especially one that results in a boot failure, I get extremely angry. I feel like I have been betrayed by my best friend. If system gets damaged, I feel just as much pain as if a good friend went into hospital.

The thing to do is to make sure you are prepared for worst possible thing that can happen ... total system failure. This is a very difficult task to write about as there are many different ways that a computer can eat itself or be eaten - perhaps as many ways as there are computers.

It is beyond scope of this article to go into great detail on how to make your system totally recoverable. There are many other great resources on internet and in documentation that originally came with your computer which will help you prepare.

Briefly, though, what you need are following:

- The CD ROM containing operating system installation files. This virtually always comes with a new system. It will be labeled something like "Windows 95" or "Windows 2000".

- Any other kind of recovery CD that came with your system.

- A bootable media. Sometimes CD ROM itself is bootable. More often, you will get one or more floppy diskettes with your system. Keep these in a safe place.

- An emergency repair disk. This is usually one (sometimes more) diskettes which contain all of configuration options for your operating system. You need to create these occasionally (they are not automatic) - usually whenever you make a major change.