Tips

Back-up

The absolute necessity of backing up your important and critical files cannot be stressed enough. Hard drives crash far too often.

For photos and music, you should back up using CDs or DVDs. For everything else, there are a few choices:

1) Flash drives: Not recommended for long term storage. Not totally reliable as many fail.

2) External hard drive. These usually come with automatic back-up software.

3) Online service such as Carbonite, starting at about $60.00 per year.