The Need for Data Protection

I imagine that I don't need to sell you too hard on the need to protect the information that you keep on your home computer; most people are aware that they should be doing something about it but just don't know where to start. It's also easy to procrastinate about it since you might figure nothing's going to go wrong...until it does. If you need convincing, think about what you would lose if someone broke into your house right now and stole your computer. Family photos, personal email, letters you've written, financial information, just gone. And much of this is difficult or impossible to replace you can probably re-create most of your address book from memory or by sending out a "Please send me your current mailing address" email to all of your friends. But those family photos from your last vacation are pretty much irreplaceable. This has even happened to me: I lost most of the pictures from my college graduation, not from a virus but just by clicking on the wrong button while I was working on my computer and not realizing what had happened until it was too late. So, you should put a plan in place that will back up the files you care about so that you can restore them when you need to.