Once a year, I try to remind DomainingTips readers to back up their data. As someone who has a little bit of experience in the hosting industry, let me just say words can’t begin to describe how many problems/headaches can be avoided by simply backing up your data and doing it frequently enough.

My request for you guys is this: back up your data today, right after reading this post if possible.

If you have blogs or other websites, back up the files and especially databases! There are many cheap backup services to choose from. Tip: whenever you’re thinking about buying something hosting-related, visit the WebHostingTalk “Web Hosting Offers” section, where various service providers (including backup services) post special discounts… or you can just back up data on your computer, it’s better than nothing. If you can do both, even better.

If you’re working on various projects (like I’m working on my new book) then for the love of God, have backups! The last thing you want is to find out days upon days of hard work went down the drain due to a HDD failure or something else that renders you unable to access certain files.

The same principle is valid for personal photos, videos and so on. Losing these memories might not cost you money but it would make you very sad… I for one like backing up such data on an external HDD.

… the list could go on and on.

This was a short post with a quick and simple conclusion: back up your data today, preferably right now. You’ll thank me later 🙂