The data on your home PC can be just as valuable, if not more so, as the data on a business system. It can be vulnerable to the same threats as data on a business system. Fortunately home data backup can be affordable and easy to setup.

There are numerous different types of media that you can store your backed up data on. A standard CD-R or CD-RW will work, but they only hold about 700MB of data. This means that you will probably have numerous CDs to keep track of depending on how much data you have. There is also DVD-R that holds about 4.7GB. The DVD-R is fairly slow, it is not reusable, and you may still need several disks to hold all of your data. The external hard drive is probably the best way to go. There are a few types of interfaces for these drives (USB, Firewire a.k.a 1394, eSATA), so make sure that you get one that is compatible with your PC. Every PC on the market will have an USB port, so this is probably the best way to go if you are unsure of what ports your PC has. As a safe assumption, an external hard drive that is double the size of your hard drive in the PC should suffice. This assures some space for your data to grow in size.

The software used to run the backups is the most important aspect. If your backup software doesn’t run reliably then you won’t be able to rely on the data being there if something happens to your PC. Windows XP comes with a descent backup program named NTBackup. NTBackup walks you through a wizard that lets you select where the data is that you want to backup. It will ask where you want to send the backed up data, and it will let you set a schedule backup jobs to run automatically so your data is continuously backed up as often as you would like.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 come with a backup utility but it seriously lacks options that make it a good program to use. If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, or want an even more robust program than Windows XP’s NTBackup, there are a few other options out there. One that I not only recommend, but use myself, is GFI Backup Home Edition. It is a free and feature rich backup application that will do everything you need.[UPDATE: GFI HOME BACKUP IS NO LONGER FREE, BUT IT IS STILL A GOOD PRODUCT THAT I DO RECOMMEND.] Acronis True Image Home is another fine backup application. This one costs about $50 and will not only allow you to backup your data files, but create a whole image of your hard drive to restore the entire system in one shot.

When setting up the backup job, in whatever application you decide to go with, there are a few locations that should always be backed up. These locations are where Windows will automatically store some of your data, and most people will use the “My Documents” folder to store their data.

The most common locations for your data are:

In Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\My documents

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Favorites

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Cookies

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Desktop

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Application Data\Address Book

In Windows Vista or Windows 7:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Contacts

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Desktop

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Downloads

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Favorites

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Music

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Pictures

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Videos

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Identities

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies

You should replace the <USERNAME> in the above examples with the user that you log into the PC with. If you are unsure of what your user name is, Right-Click on the Start button and click “Explore”. This will open a windows explorer window and it will be in the folder that you current user is located. If you have more than one user created, backup these folders under each user’s folder. Another method, if you are unsure what to backup, is to just grab the entire “Documents and Settings” folder in Windows XP or the entire “Users” folder in Windows Vista or Windows 7. The drawback to this is if you have old, unused users still on the PC it may be wasting space on your backup drive. If you have data stored in other location you will have to select these in the backup job as well.

Restoring your files is just as easy as backing them up with most applications. There will be a restore wizard that will step you through the process. Basically it will let you look through the files that are backed up, and click on the ones that you would like to restore. When you run the restore job, most will give you the option to either redirect where the restored file will go, or rename them. This doesn’t really matter if your file got deleted or corrupted, but if you are just looking to get a previous version of the file and want to keep the one that is still there, you don’t want the restore job to overwrite the file.

An important thing to remember is that this is just a quick overview of the tools available and the process required to backup your data. Whatever backup application you use will have much more in-depth help files. An application that you pay for may also have free support that you can all and use to do the initial setup.