It's 10pm. Do you know where your data is?

Data. Small bits of information clustered together to make Word files, documents,pictures, MP3s, HTML etc. We work on our computers every single day never sparing a thought for all those millions of chunks of data spread all over our hard disks. The data is there and it does it's job.

Until of course the data is not there anymore.

72 hours ago I suffered from massive data loss. There were no hackers involved. No power surges or lightning strikes. Just wear and tear on my hard disk. 20 Gigabytes of business and personal information gone forever. Passwords, HTML files, ebooks all gone. I didn't lose any sleep though. Why? Simply because this was my secondary hard disk that was only used as a backup drive. All my critically important data is safely stored elsewhere.

Picture this scenario. You sit at your computer, turn it on and nothing. Dead. You've just lost everything you've worked on for the last 12 months. All your Adwords campaigns, website templates, ebooks, Excel files. Everything. How do you feel? How do you go about recovering?

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70% of companies who suffer serious data loss go out of business within 12 months.

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The truth is that most people never recover from losing all their data.

What can you do to prevent this happening to you? Backup.Backup. Backup. Use a backup system.

How do I backup my data?

You could use a zip drive, a CDR/DVD writer, a USB drive or an secure online storage service. Using any of the above is far better than using nothing at all and hoping for the best.

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Data loss cost US businesses in excess of 18 billion dollars in 2003.

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How often should I backup my data?

You should backup all important data on your PC at least once a week. An easy way to do this is to use a rotating backup system. Get 4 blank disks . Label these disks Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4. At the start of the month make a fresh copy of all your critical data on the Week 1 disk and continue this process on Week 2, 3 and 4. Following this procedure ensures that no matter what happens your stored data will never be more than 1 week old and you'll also have 3 other copies of your data stored away that are less than a month old. Simple. Effective.

What software do I need?

Microsoft Windows has its own backup software included. Apple Mac users can take advantage of Apples Backup software and iDisk backup service.

How soon should I do this?

Now. Even using floppy disks start the process of backing up your data today. The sooner you start the safer your data is.

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Human error and hardware failure account for 76% of all data loss.

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The cost of recovering from a major hardware failure such as a hard disk crash can be massively reduced by keeping a backup of your data.

You're worked hard to build up your business. Don't throw all that hard work away by not taking the proper steps to safeguard your critical information.

For more information on keeping your data safe visit visit the Data Backup Guide on Affiliate-Advocate.com.

Niall Roche is the content author and owner of http://www.affiliate-advocate.com

info@affiliate-advocate.com