New Year’s Resolutions are notorious for being kept … for about 6 days. But there are several resolutions worth keeping this new year. One of them is to back up your personal computer files on a regular basis.

Why should you backup your personal computer files?

If you’ve ever lost information that was even mildly important, you understand the critical nature of backing up your computer files. Hey, your company probably backs up its files, you should do the same thing. Today’s hard drives have thousands of songs you paid for, thousands of pictures you took, important tax files, and other information you wouldn’t want to be without. Backing up just makes good, frugal sense.

File Backup Options

• Backup on your hard drive
• Backup on an external drive
• Backup remotely

Backup on your own hard drive

Well, it’s better than nothing, but not by much. This backup option really only works to help you keep from accidentally deleting an important file, as long as you saved it to your backup folder. If your computer is damaged, lost or stolen, you’re out of luck.

Backup on an external drive

External drive backups on CDs, thumb drives, external hard drives or other media is a much better option but it has several problems of its own: