If you are using a computer for your business, as others have said, you need an adequate backup plan.
First, organize your files in subfolders.
Use folders, with subfolders, with subfolders, with subfolders. It is amazing how many people keep important things scattered all over their computer and on their desktop. With everything in a neat, orderly system, it is much easier to back up your files quickly and efficiently and less likely that you will miss backing up some critical data.
Second, back up your files to a second physical device.
Copy your files to a second, physical hard drive on a regular basis. Having the data in two physical places saves your bacon. Having the second hard drive inside the same computer is convenient... until the computer is destroyed or stolen. Mirrored hard drives work O.K., but if the controller barfs garbage it can barf garbage across both drives. Many of the USB drives come with backup software to automate this task. If not, force yourself to do a manual copy to the second device on a regular basis. This leads to point three.
Third, back up your files to CD or DVD and store them off site.
This is so easy to do, takes only minutes and will save your bacon's bacon in a catastrophy. Off site storage can be a seperate building like an unattached garage, a box in a family member's basement or a safety deposit box at a bank. For that matter, make two copies and keep one at home and one off site.
Fourth, test your backups.
What good is a backup CD or DVD if it is garbage and does not work? Always test your backup media in another PC to make sure it is readable. Many CDs written on one PC end up being unreadable on a different PC.
Fifth, have a backup computer.
For a small business, it just makes sense to have two, identical computers with identical data on them. If one dies, just use the other one while the dead one gets repaired. It is cheap insurance.
Sixth, make a GHOST image of your hard drive.
A product like GHOST is a lifesaver AND a time saver. All you have to do is make a GHOST image of the hard drive at regular intervals, like whenever you add software or make major changes to the machine, and store that GHOST image on a DVD. If your hard drive dies, just install a new hard drive, boot off the GHOST disk and restore in about 5 minutes. Then copy your date back from your data backup disks and you are back up and running faster than it took you to drive over to Best Buy and pick up that new hard drive.
Seventh, keep your software disks in a safe, organized place.
Many times people will start to rebuild a PC only to find that they have lost the factory restore disks, their operating system disks, their license keys and their third party software disks.
Look, you can redundancy yourself into the poor house with mirrors, RAID, tape backup, duplicate hardware offsite, etc...
As a business owner, you need to evaluate how much catastrophic data loss will cost your business and how much you can afford to lose. The steps I mention above are CHEAP!!! A decent USB external hard drive is a couple hundred bucks at most. A copy of GHOST is $70.00. Blank DVDs can be had for FREE after rebates. So for less than $300 bucks you can rest in peace. A second PC is a luxury to some small businesses, but, again, may be necessary if you cannot afford down time.
Finally, if you are a geek, start looking into VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC. Making a virtual machine image allows you to take that image to any PC or Mac and run it in a virtual environment. So if your PC croaks, you can run over to Mom's house, fire up virtual PC on her machine, load it from your DVD and your are running in 10 minutes.
