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Let’s consider total system backups first. In the old days, you would back up from your hard disk, which was probably about 10 MB, to a floppy disk, which could have been as much as 1.44 MB. You could back up a whole HD to a handful of floppies in about a half hour, just label the floppies, and go on your way. Then came ZIP drives, with (for the time) huge capacities of 100 MB or more.

With today’s 80 GB or bigger drives, it’s not that simple.

To back up an active hard drive the easiest method is to have another hard drive of a similar or greater capacity connected to the same computer. You can use software to manage this (too many programs to list and the hard drives actually sold as backup options will often include something) or you can just drag and drop like you move or copy any files. If you have a lot of data and not much of it changes often, using some kind of backup software will save you aggravation because Windows will want to copy the same files over themselves, every time. This takes forever! And is usually not necessary. On the other hand, if you generally work in files that are unique, you may be able to say no to the Windows system question “do you want to replace files with the same name.”

Either way, make sure you select a real brand, and use the fastest connection available on your machine. For most of us this is USB 2.0. Get the fastest hard drive disk speed your budget (or favorite manufacturer) allows — 7200 will be pleasant, as of this writing.

Hard drives come in all shapes and sizes these days, but here we are focused on comprehensive backups and archiving.

A terrific option for backing up a laptop is something like the Western Digital Passport line, which has several knockoffs also, including excellent models from Fantom. See the Resources section for more.

Currently anywhere from $99 to $299 and frequently available at deep discount merchandisers like Costco, these great units run directly on USB power, are fast and quiet and have rubber coated enclosures. We have a 40 GB Travel mate laptop and find an 80 GB Passport an excellent companion for both backup and archiving.

One important note. Partitions on the same drive are OK for multiple file copies but are totally useless in the event of a hard drive crash. In other words, if you have C and D partitions, putting copies of your files from C on D makes sense if the only concern you have is corrupted files.

For example, if your mail software is on C and a virus were to mess up the C drive files, you would have a clean backup on your D drive. But bear in mind these partitions are like putting up a thin wall in one room. They reside on the same physical disk, so while software problems can be recovered this way, a hardware failure will destroy both “drives.”

For portability, archiving, and in some situations backups, CD or DVD discs can be useful. The drives are ubiquitous, the media cheap and easy to deal with.

Bear in mind however that the media are also more fragile than some people think and they do somewhat degrade over time.

We’re all for saving dough but don’t be penny wise and pound foolish here: When using CD or DVD disks for backup or storage, do not go cheap.

Go with a major brand you know (TDK, Maxell, other well-known media companies) and if you can afford it, go for discs that are packaged as gold, archival, or similar. Unlike a lot of marketing scams (premium gas, anyone?) the differences between junky digital media and high-end stuff is very real.

Cheap CDs will often not read or write properly, they are more sensitive to scratches, heat, and dust, they use inferior metals for the data surface and inferior plastics for the disc itself.

When the difference between junk that will have you tearing your hair out and the best stuff you can get is about 40 cents a disc for crap or 75 cents to a buck a disc for good stuff…forget the percentages and get the better discs.

Discs are good for storing data but not so good for keeping prying eyes away from it.

Your Security Options — Beyond Passwords

Passwords are OK but if you want real protection, you want biometrics. Surprisingly, this is now no more expensive than a dinner in most cities. See Resources section for more.

Your Security/Platform Options — Remote storage

For extremely important files that you may need to access from anywhere at anytime, there are a number of ways to utilize the Internet for storage. You might even want to keep some things only online.

A “quick and dirty” solution is to open one or several free email accounts and email important things to yourself. This is easy and cheap but you will usually be limited to 1—2 GB of storage. That’s a whole lot of Word docs but only a few minutes of high-def video, so consider what you need to store.

X Drive has several programs but the basic service is 5GB of storage for $10 per month. They also have a free trial of the 5GB option. (Try and get a free trial on any hardware system).

Now that we’ve covered a lot of ground in terms of what you should be thinking about doing with your systems to keep them safe from threats large and small, let’s get practical and tactical and spend the next bunch of pages taking a much closer look at some of the equipment and services you might want to look into.

General reseller/retailer recommendations

Almost everything we talk about here (except specialized services like X Drive ) can be purchased from any well-stocked computer equipment store.

You can certainly go to CompUSA, Best Buy, or any of the other big box retailers. Some Radio Shack stores are nicely stocked and the prices are reasonable.

But for computer equipment in general we strongly endorse two “open secret” stores, where all of our serious techie programmer type friends have gone for years.

These are Tiger Direct and CDW.

Tiger is located in Miami. They have huge selections and often, ridiculously low prices. They carry everything from high end gaming systems to bare bones boxes, and everything in between. They recently started selling DVDs at a discount also. Tiger tends to be more of an “insider” place to shop than CDW, and caters to small businesses and individuals mainly.

Chicago-based CDW has been around since 1984 but recently started raising its profile. You may have seen their ads on big news and search sites. They now move about $6 billion in material per year.

We tend to like Tiger for “stuff” and CDW for systems. Visit both to comparison shop.

General brand recommendations

We like saving money as much as anyone, but we also think there are places (like CD discs for storing business information) where paying a little more now is worth it later.

You’ll find in each category there is a brand leader, for example, in power management it’s APC. Is APC worth the extra money? In general, we think so, because the extra money isn’t much extra and you get a lot more real value. On the other hand, is CyberPower a good bet? Absolutely. If they offer a product that meets your needs, and perhaps is on sale, you won’t go wrong.

When it comes to things like cleaning solutions, like bottled waters, it’s mostly marketing. Plain old rubbing alcohol is a perfectly good solvent for most situations — but if the new-age anti-static whose-awhat-sit spray makes you feel like you are taking better care of your screens, go for it…

Let’s take a look at a few major product areas, and get pretty specific about what you might want to actually buy.