A constant and organized backup is the only possible way to save data that would otherwise be impossible to recover due to a physical problem, such as a burned hard disk. But the data backup is not as easy as it may seem at first sight. First of all, you must arrange a system backup, such as copies of essential data from your hard drive to CD, flash media, DVD or other external media.
One thing that will prove to be very useful is to keep all data on a limited number of different external media. If you copy any documents or files on a different backup media, when you need it, there are two things that can go wrong:
A. Having to find your disc inside the huge amount of drives where the backup is made;
B. The disk may be damaged physically by itself after some time.
Try to keep everything on a single DVD (you can burn data onto a disk and leave it open for burning other data inthe future), since 4.7 GB is enough for what most of the people consider the essential data of your computer. Also perform a backup of the backup, just in case something unexpected happens, like a cup of coffee poured on DVD (much more common than you might think!)