The importance of carrying out regular Back-up's - It is normously important io do a regular back-up of all of your work. A computer virus can strike at any time, sometimes even with antivirus software installed. Just think how this would affect you if you hadn't got a recent back up of your work, not just your day-to-day work but all your software programs too.
Even though a virus hasn't caused me any problems (yet!) I can think of one or two occasions where I've been caught out! A more recent example concerned my move to the US - for several weeks I was working off a laptop and even though I'd backed up my work (and got back-ups of my back-ups) I hadn't got copies of those software programs that I use on a day-to-day basis that I'd downloaded from the internet. It wasn't a crisis, but very irritating knowing that I had to wait at least 8 weeks until my PC turned up! If I'd thought about backing-up properly then this wouldn't have happened.
A simple system to ensure that you back-up all your important work/software etc. regularly is to build it into your weekly schedule:
Once a week back up everything that you have been working on that week (do this each Friday afternoon). A quick way to see at-a-glance those documents that you have been working on is to open up your directory(s) in Windows Explorer and sort the list by date order. Then you just need select those documents that are within that week's date range and copy them onto your back-up disk*.
Once a month make a back-up your weekly disk. I would advise creating a separate disk and then just copying your weekly disk*.
Once a year archive all work on your PC that is older than 1 year and put onto a separate archive disk*.
*By disk I am referring to any form of media that you may use - floppy disk, CD, Zip disk etc.
This is the system that I use and it works very well for me (just so that you know I practice what I preach!).
