Most of these lists have reminders to back up data and sad stories about data lost to computer problems. Some people back up entire hard drives and some just backup individual data. As long as one backs up their individual data files like genealogy database, Quicken or alternate financial program, word processing files, email messages, etc., one really does not need to back up their entire hard drive. Windows generally gets more unreliable over time, and many experts recommend reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling programs from your original installation disks yearly. You would likely not want to restore a whole system backup if you are reformatting or replacing the hard drive, because it would have the many problems developed over time that reformatting and reinstall is trying to solve. Most programs have a backup procedure under the file menu. I usually backup to zip drives because they hold large files, and I can keep most of my backups together in one place. For those having a USB port on their computer and no internal zip drive, the USB external zip drive is wonderful. It is almost as fast as the internal drive. Whatever media you use, make sure to have more than one backup for each program on more that one disk. Hard drives, floppy drives, zip drives can all fail. It is also good to rotate backup disks, and keep several over a period of time. That way if you have backed up a file that became corrupted before you backed up, an earlier backup may not be corrupted. Along with backing up, one wants to keep their virus software updated every month or two to prevent loses that can come about as the result of having a virus on your computer. I know Norton AntiVirus has free updates with the files updated monthly, and I believe the other major antivirus programs do also. And remember, back up your genealogy program after each session and before attempting to add gedcom files, pack your database, merge records, etc. It is too easy for something to go wrong. In fact always put a gedcom file in its own new database before trying to add it to your primary database. It will save you LOTS of grief. As someone earlier said, hard drives eventually do fail, sometimes when quite new. One should never neglect their regular backups. The process takes a few seconds and can save hours of grief. We all work too hard on our genealogy research to lose it to lack of preventative forethought. Margaret Scheffler