Ron, I agree that backing up your important data files is important, and that everyone should do so. I, for one, have accumulated so much "stuff" that I had to upgrade to a DVD-RW drive for backup/storage. There are a couple of other tips I can offer you as well: 1. Put a secondary hard drive in your PC. Make sure this is a physical hard drive and not just an extended partition on your primary hard drive. I keep all of my important data files on this drive. There are two benefits to this. First, you are free to format/reload your primary drive without worrying about backing up your data files. Second, the virii that wipe out hard drives always wipe out the boot drive, but never seem to bother secondary drives. Now that I've said this publicly, someone will make one that wipes out ALL of your drives. Oh, well... :( 2. In lieu of a secondary hard drive, consider investing in an IDE RAID controller (or a motherboard with onboard RAID) and an extra set of hard drives. You can use RAID-0 for performance (it uses 2 physical drives as 1 logical drive, splitting the work load between the two). RAID-1 will mirror your hard drives for protection against mechanical hard drive failures. If one drive fails, you simply replace it and restore from the mirror. If you want the best of both, use RAID-0+1 which does both but requires 4 matching hard drives. My motherboard was $89 with onboard RAID-0+1, and 20 GB drives are available for $75 or less. Best of luck, Brian Wheatley