Back up your files routinely
It's important to develop the habit of backing up your files routinely, especially your data files. Most computers come with a recovery disk for the hard drive, and though that will not include any programs you have downloaded, you will have your initial operating system.

Any other programs you installed should have an installation disk so that you can reinstall them if you have a problem with your computer.

On the other hand, if you routinely back up your computer, you should also back up your program data as well. It is not necessary to do it the same as your data files, but you should always have a copy of the entire files on your computer.

Backing up your mail files
Most Outlook data is stored in PST files. These can be located anywhere on your computer, but are usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\<your-login-name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. You'd think Microsoft would put something as important as your PST files in My Documents wouldn't you? Nope, no such luck.

When you want to back up your Outlook data, be sure you've quit Outlook and make sure you grab all the PST files on your computer (it might be a good idea to do a disk-wide search) and copy them to your back up media.

The importance of backing up your files
Most people understand the concept of backing up data files, but quite often the thought of doing a back up on the entire computer seems to be extra work. After all, what is the chance you are going to accidentally delete information from your hard drive?

It is, of course, much more likely that you will accidentally delete a file than information on your hard drive. Unfortunately that line of thinking is why people lose important information on their computers -- accidental deletion is not the only way to lose information on your computer. In fact, very few people lose information from accidental deletion!

The most important cause of the loss of computer files is hard drive crashes. Keep in mind that your hard drive has a life span like any thing else electronic and is prone to malfunctions or crashes. Most people think only viruses will cause a hard drive crash and if they keep their anti-virus protection up to date, they will never have to worry about it. Unfortunately, if that is your line of thinking, you will find yourself in a world of trouble because hard drives wear out over time.

There are many reasons your hard drive may crash other than virus infection. Certainly if you keep your virus protection up to date and utilize your fire wall, the chances of a virus entering your computer and causing your hard drive crash are greatly reduced, but there is nothing to prevent a hard drive crash. Another key issue is if your computer does become infected with a virus, and you cannot remove it using your anti-virus protection, the only other solution is to reformat your hard drive.

When you reformat your hard drive, you wipe everything off the computer including your operating system -- you start all over. If you have not backed up your files prior to becoming infected with the virus, you must recreate all of those files because if you reinstall them, you will infect your computer all over again unless you know someone who can do it for you on another computer.

I remember some years ago when I was in college, one of my disks became infected from the computer I was using there, and our university library where I did some of my homework (my pre-computer days) was able to clean up some of the files and save them for me.

Don't let that happen to you -- back up your files routinely so that you have clean and up to date files if something does happen.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's author of Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours (Sam's, 2003) and coauthor of OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.