Backup your computer! This is something everybody know but most often you neglect or forget to take car of it. Last Tuesday I got a call from my dad saying that he had a black screen with a blinking white line. He had already tried rebooting and verified that no external drive was connected. Twenty minutes later I was at my parents house and the diagnostic was simple: hard drive failure.

For a lot of people this could result in the complete lost of documents, music and tones of pictures. Worst, if you are a freelancer or working from home you could be put out off business, but why? Microsoft includes a backup and restore tool with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. This tool works well, it’s FREE and takes little time to setup. Even without using this tool, making a copy of your files can be as simple as drag and drop on a USB drive.

Microsoft backup and restore tool allows you to do a complete backup of your computer or select specific folders. You can than schedule it to run, at least WEEKLY!!! That way if the worst happen you only lose a few days of data, not years and Microsoft tool is designed to do a full backup and only backup modified or added content on subsequent run. So, all you need to protect your computer is a few minutes to setup your backup and a USB or eSATA external drive. AT 100$ for 1TB drive there’s no reason why you can’t buy one.

Here’s a video showing how Microsoft Windows 7 Backup and Restore works.

As for my parents, I had already configured Microsoft backup and restore on their Windows 7 PC. I did have to buy a new drive and reinstall all their software but since they have a backup, nothing is lost and all that’s left is to restore on the newly installed system.

So, what are you waiting for? Take a few minutes and save yourself the lost of work and souvenirs!