Making simple copies of your data is one way to help protect your data from loss. Some people have become used to carrying their data from office to home and back on removable media. The mistake in this case would be to assume you data is safe simply because it is with you. If you're in this habit, modify it by copying your data on the removable media to one or more of your hard drives on a periodic basis. Better yet, install a tape backup in one of your machines and store the tapes at the other location.
Data copies can be a problem when the size of your data won't fit conveniently on a removable media without compression. Tape and other backup software will allow you to compress your data in a backup file that can be restored in the event of a drive failure.
