You've decided to be a responsible computer user and back up your files before disaster hits and you've chosen online backup as the best backup option. Now what? It's easy to know you should back up, but what should you back up?

Important Files To Archive

If you ask what to back up most tech gurus will say to back up everything, but that answer isn't necessarily a valuable one. Drives today are huge and copying every file to an online backup can take hours or days. Besides, if you don't know where things are how are you going to restore needed files? Replacing a damaged hard drive isn't a matter of copying all the files onto a new drive.

What files couldn't you live without? You might miss that cool wallpaper you use but you could manage without it. What would it hurt to lose? Examples \include financial records, digital photos, important email plus your address book, internet bookmarks, registration keys for purchased software, and more.

What Shouldn't You Back Up?

Online backup makes it easy to protect data but there are files that are a waste to archive. Computers use temporary files for a variety of reasons but they are called "temporary" for a reason. The biggest source of these is your internet browser. Browsers save copies of images, videos, and other web page information on your computer so that if you revisit the page it will load more quickly the second time. However there is no reason to back these up since they will just be redownloaded the next time you visit the site.

Although you should back up documents there is no reason to back up the programs that create those documents. When you install software such as Microsoft Office it copies and changes files all over your hard drive. You cannot just copy the Office directory to a new computer and have it work. You will have to reinstall the software from the original CDs.

Better Too Much Than Too Little

If you don't know what to archive to online backup then it is better to back up everything. Yes, we just said you shouldn't just back up everything but if you have no real clue what to store or where to find it, it's better to protect everything and sort it out later.

The same philosophy applies to frequency of online backup. Most sources will tell you to back up daily. While this may seem frequent if your data doesn't change much you'll appreciate it if you ever have to restore. The perversity of computers ensures they love to crash just before the backup. If you use online backup only monthly, you just lost a month's worth of data.

Regardless of what or how often you back up, anything do is better than nothing. Free online backup sites are easy to use so what are you waiting for?