Regularly backing up your important computer files could be the biggest timesaver you'll ever experience.  I lost all my files years ago from a lightning strike. I retrieved most of the files - after spending a lot of time and money to do so.

To make effective backups, it's recommended that you backup regularly (daily is ideal) and that you store your backup off site. Backing up off site ensures that your backup won't meet the same fate as your original files. So if you're the victim of a fire, a flood, or a lightning strike, your off site backup will stay safe.

I now use Carbonite, a service that automatically backs up and encrypts all my files and photos to its online server. I've had to retrieve the backed up files once and it was easy and fast to use. At $55 a year, I consider it a good way to effortlessly back up all my files.

If you don't want to spend any money, you could try "cloud computing." With cloud computing, you create and store your documents online.  Since the documents are online, they can be accessed from any computer in the world with internet access, using a user name and password that you set up. Both Google docs and Zoho offer complete document software suites, including word processing (like Microsoft Word and WordPerfect), spreadsheet, (like Excel), and presentations (like PowerPoint) plus many other features as well. Both are free. Unless something unthinkable happens to the internet, you won't need to backup files saved in the clouds.

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