Backups

I have been fooling with computers for many years. My job at BellSouth got me started in the 80's and I got a PC years before most folks got one. Something I have taught from early on is to backup your data. If something is important to you...if it took you a long time to create, then you need to make sure you back it up.
I've been fortunate for most of my PC career. I’ve had many computers and I haven't lost a hard drive yet, but I still back up my data. I'm so glad that I did.
Tonight I was working on my Dora High School Alumni mailing list. I have about 500 names and email addresses in this list. It's what I use to send out information to all the alumni. Tonight as I was doing some maintenance I got a message that said fatal error on file DHSList.gdx. No biggie, I get error messages frequently. But this time when I went to re-launch my alumni list is said the words you never want to read....."File not found". I got out of the program and re-launched but the file had been corrupted and it was gone. I thought CRAP!!!!!!! It would take hours to recreate this list. Then I remembered my backups. I did a full backup on 1/31/06. So I looked on the backup drive and there was my file. A simple click of the mouse and Wahlaaa, my file was back.
If you work with computers a lot, it is crazy NOT to have regularly scheduled backups. If you don't do backups, I suggest you start....today.