Think back about two years. Imagine if someone had told you then that a new PC in 2003 would come with oh, say, 40GB of drive space. Now, imagine that you actually have a 40GB drive and manage to fill it up with family photos, MP3s, and valuable documents. What happens if you lose all that data?

Bigger hard drives mean bigger losses--if you don't back up your data.

Perhaps we procrastinate because backup choices are so confusing. First, there's the software to consider. Will a backup app automate backups? Will it back up the entire drive or just files and directories that are critical? You'll have to take storage hardware into consideration, too. Will you need another hard drive? An Iomega Zip drive? Or perhaps a new CD-RW or DVD-RAM drive? To help you navigate the wide world of backup choices, we've put together guides to the various types available.