As we all know, we should back up our system as soon as possible.But if you are like most of us, you can start tomorrow.The problem is that unless you have experienced a serious computer failure and then it Taihu Lake, it will rarely come tomorrow.Taking the time to back up data or the entire hard drive is not as hard as it seems.If your system goes through a crash, the reward for doing so will be great.If you have Windows XP, you will need to install the new Windows backup ultility from Windows XP cdrom.Just put WinXP cdrom in The cdrom drive and find the line D: \ VALEADD \ MSFT tbbackup.Here you see that the first letter is D, but if your optical drive has a different drive number, swap D with your drive number.To install the utility, click the File named ntbbackup.msi.The backup utility will be installed to the system Tool Group.Click Start, all programs, attachments, system tools, and backup ".There is a neat wizard that will guide you through the backup process.WinXP's backup utility will back up your entire hard drive and make a recovery disk to boot.A neat third party backup software you can try is the new technology information system on http:/www.ntius.You can download their trial version and put it into use for 30 days.If this is a cup of tea for you, the full version will provide you about $79.When performing the first backup, you should back up the entire hard drive.After that, it is better to perform incremental backups.This type of backup only allows backups of files that have changed since the last backup was performed.Differential backup copies the files and files of the changes added since the last time the entire backup was performed.This type of backup is more detailed and easier to recover than incremental backups.You can back up files on cdroms and compress them to save space and backup time.During the backup process, WinXP will compress folders, subfolders, and files.You can purchase compression software that will save you space for your cdrom storage.Once the compressed files are assigned to your hard drive, they are automatically decompressed.You can also use the second hard drive as a backup storage device.We use two backup hard drives to make sure the final PC fix is up and running 24/7.You can purchase from installing an internal hard drive into an ide cable or from an external hard drive connected to a universal serial bus or USB port.The advantage of an external drive is that the storage space is very large and the data transfer speed is fast and can be moved from your computer to any other computer.We use an external hard drive with Western Digital 170 gigabytes, and we just need to bounce it back easily to any of our four computers.You can also consider providing online services for backup data.If you lose all your backup data, such as natural disasters like floods, your online data is there for you.Another advantage of online backup is that you can access, upload, or download data from any location.If you are considering online data storage, it is better to use high speed Internet access.One such online backup service is Istorage located at http:/www.iomega.Com/istorage and $2 fee.50 mbs to $17 £ 49 per month.95 storage capacity per month is 1 MB.Alternatively, you can view the file anywhere in the url http:/www.filesanywhere.Another online service that can be tried is CapSure located at http:/www.capsure.If you haven't already done so, back up your system now in one way or another.If you have some critical data that you can't get at all without, take the time to invest in a backup device or one of many online backup services.Stop and perform these backups as soon as possible.If something goes wrong with your computer, you will appreciate it.Safety is better than sorry