hey i started backing things up too! yay for me!

Thanks for posting that, Ariel. I had a hard drive failure years ago. I've yet to fully recover from that trauma...

Do you have any suggestions for a device to use to backup a computer? I don't like the online option the guy in the article was talking about, I want something I can do myself at home but I have no idea what to get. I don't like the idea of copying everything onto 9 million disks.

Elayne, if Ariel hasn't already responded to you, here's an answer that's probably more than you were looking for...

A very good and relatively cheap way to back up is to get an external hard drive. You can get them for what comes down to about $.50/gig, which is well worth the investment. Portable drives are about double that price. So even if you have a very big internal hard drive, you can get an external backup drive for not tons of money.

The important thing to remember, though, is that nothing is perfect. External drives are still drives and so can die from overheating, overuse, etc.

I've been using an external backup for several years now, and it works for me. Some people back up backups, which I think is a little extreme, but their data will just be that much safer.

If I get an external hard drive do I need to buy software to back up my computer or does it come with everything I need? I asked a friend who works with computers and she said she thought I would need to buy software for an external hard drive but she had no suggestions and she didn't sound too sure of herself. I've had no time to research it so I've been putting it off.

I bought this drive and it came with backup software. The software is easy to use; I spent five minutes setting it up and it runs automatically now.

Thanks for the link. I just ordered one and it looks plenty big storage wise (and I got free shipping which is always a cheap thrill).