Storing your data copies is just as important as making them. All media have a range of temperatures that they can safely survive. Long term storage in high humidity can also affect many backup media choices. Pick a place for your data storage out of the light, heat, extreme cold, and of moderate humidity. Test your backups periodically and use fresh media on a scheduled basis to insure the highest possible integrity for your backups.
Don't keep your backups in your car. To convince yourself of this, put a cassette tape and a CD on the dashboard of your car and leave it there all day in August. Perform this test only on material that you consider trash in the first place.
What files should should you backup?
The most important files for you are the data files you create when you operate your e-mail software, word processor, spreadsheet, accounting software, etc. Not all files are automatically saved to your My Documents folder (in the case of Windows users) and you may have to do some investigation with your programs to find out where all your data files are. The programs themselves are not as important because, if you have a full failure of a hard drive, a restored program rarely will operate correctly. In order to restore your programs you should reinstall them from the original disks.
Virus Arrested, Files Recovered: Frequently, data loss can be due to a virus attack. In one such case, data recovery was accomplished on a drive that had been attacked by a virus that methodically erased files then in its final act of vandalism, it deleted the partition information from the drive. When the machine was rebooted, the drive was recognized, but no drive letter was assigned. The owner ran an "fdisk" to learn that no partition existed on the drive. A friend then suggested the data recovery services of Internet Desk, Inc. Fourty-eight hours later the machine was back in running order with all but 13 of some 65,000 files recovered.
