Darn!
How do I get my files back?
Never you say “I am in trouble”, until you ask yourself the above question. That is really what the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English should call “Trouble”.
I can’t stress much on the importance of a computer in our modern society. Even in my native Africa, many people have started realizing what they have missed so much for decades and are madly leaning on their computer for various tasks. A computers main functions are data communication, data processing and storage. Yeah, you heard me, “Storage”, and I think that is even more important than the other two.
We normally store the processed (and unprocessed) data on the computer’s hard drive. For us to be very confident that we can have that data any time we want, is nothing but a dream. Your computer’s hard drive, just like any other mechanical or electronic device can fail at any moment. They say prevention is better than cure. The fact that you have been using it for
Backing up your data is the only guarantee that they are safe, especially if you back them up in multiple locations. There are numerous ways of backing up files, so you can’t blame anyone if your files get lost due to hard drive failure. Most interestingly, most of the methods are well within the reach of an average PC user. Below are some backup procedures.
Manual Copying: This is probably the easiest means of creating a back up. You simply manually copy your files from your hard drive to another storage device such as CD, DVD or a floppy disk (if the data is not much). I will highly recommend you get a CD or DVD burner so that you can easily burn important data on CD or DVD and keep them in a safe place. Nero and many other burning software have made burning easy even for a caveman 
External Hard Drive: The name talks for itself. These devices are just like your hard drive, but are independent of your computer. You can just simply plug them through USB or Firewire. Since an external hard drive is independent, your backed up data won’t be affected when your computer crashed.
RAID: RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This is probably the most trusted form of backup to rely on. Imagine your data being backed up on multiple disks, all of which are independent of each other. This way, if any of the disk fails, your data will still be available on the others.
REMOTE BACKUP: If you can’t do it yourself, then maybe an online service can do it for you. One easy method of backing up your data is uploading them to a server that offers free file hosting. Some are completely free while others charge a small amount for account setup and/or maintenance fee. However, if I were you, I will like to personally take responsibility of my data. Though privacy and security is hardly an issue with online storage services, I won’t really bet on that.
