Thank goodness for external hard drives. I know they aren’t exactly stylish, but they saved my skin this week. My desktop PC crashed, again. This is probably the third time that’s happened with that computer. And this time around it was no big deal, because I had everything important backed up on an external hard drive! That little external drive is probably the single most valuable piece of tech I’ve purchased in the past year.

If you don’t have one I urge you to get one. They’re really a lifesaver. And if you don’t have a lot of data you can always just pick up a USB thumb drive and store everything on that. They are equally lifesaving! And affordable, you can pick up a 4GB thumb drive for less than $30 at some stores.

First week of the month is when I usually do all my backups on all of our computers (we have three) and also all of my websites. Even though my host provides back up services I like to go in and grab a copy for myself just in case. You never know what will happen. Have you made backups of your files and pictures lately? Today might be a good day to start a new habit of doing that once a month so you don’t lose precious data.