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.
How often should you backup?
That's a question only you can answer. How many days of data can you afford to do without? Some companies have backups running constantly so they can restore data to the minute. Most computer users don't have that level of need. Decide what's important to you, then create a schedule to backup your data on a daily or weekly basis.
Laptop Computer Data Saved: A sales rep for a large multi-national firm returned from an extended trip, having dutifully entered all of his call details in a database on his notebook computer. His first day back in the home office revealed that his data collected over the past three weeks was not available. His IS department could not find the data, and issued a new notebook computer to the sales rep, but decided to check around for someone who could retrieve the data. Internet Desk was called and the data recovery process began. Since the information was so time critical, the DataICU worked around the clock and into the weekend to finish the recovery and made the files available via ftp in time for the Monday morning sales meeting.
