I back-up my files. Isn't that enough ?
Making copies of your documents properly can mean that, should your computer suffer a catastrophic hard drive failure, all your hard work is protected and can be restored to another system or a newly-installed healthy computer. The word "documents" in this sense normally means your word-processed text, photos, music etc. - In other words, all the stuff you have created using the applications that you have.
Whilst it is very important to back-up your documents, it is also important to realise that if your computer suffers a catastrophic hard drive failure, your operating system (i.e. Windows) and all your applications (or programs) will be lost and would need to be reinstalled on a healthy hard drive. This is a lengthy process and only possible if you have the original installation disks.

A Better Back-up Solution.
The safest way to protect against a hard drive "crash" is to make an exact image of your whole hard drive that can later be restored (even to another physical drive) should it ever be necessary to do so. It is a sad fact however that whilst many people back-up their documents, most do not back-up their whole hard drive and discover, only when the damage is already done, that they have neither the knowledge nor the installation disks with which to re-build the system.
To back-up the whole computer, one needs specialist software. If you think about it, the main obstacle to making an image of the hard drive is that files that are on it are being constantly accessed by the Windows system itself and these files can not be backed-up by using the ordinary methods of copying. I've tested many different applications designed to back-up the whole computer systems and believe that I've found one that both does the job well and is relatively inexpensive to buy. This software package, when used with a removable hard drive, such as a USB or FireWire drive, is enough to effectively protect your system against any hard drive failure.

Cloning The System.
Imagine being able to make a perfect facsimile image of your computer, down to the last bit and byte. Even if your hard drive were to suffer physical damage, a new hard drive could be fitted and the "cloned" image restored to it. Using this method of protection, your whole system is preserved to the last detail. Your desktop wallpaper, settings, programs and documents would all be safe and your whole computer could be magically "fixed" so that it is in exactly the same state it was at when the image was made. Using this method, a PC can normally be restored to full working order within a half hour of fitting a completely new drive. This is obviously a much quicker and less costly solution than having to re-build from scratch (see "Reinstalling Windows"). Once installed, such a system can automatically and "invisibly" make overnight back-ups so that you have a "safety net" to fall back on should the worst happen.

Planning for the future.
Unfortunately many people buy computers and don't give much thought towards what could happen if things go wrong. I've come across people who run their whole business from one laptop and have never make a single back-up of anything. I guess that most people think that it will never happen to them. Nowadays, we all wear safety belts in cars because we are smart enough to know that it happens to someone and we don't ever want that "someone" to be us. Your computer files are obviously not as important as your own life but have you ever given a thought as to how you would feel if you lost them? Installing a software "safety belt" for your PC is very inexpensive and I sometimes wonder why more people don't do it. I've seen a few very disappointed people who have lost all their address and email contacts as well as all their photos, pictures and documents. They never expected it to happen to them.

Hard drives don't just break do they?
Well actually, yes they do. Some will last for years but others will crash much sooner. The simple fact is that storing data on a hard drive is always a gamble. My hard drive ownership numbers about a score and from those twenty or so drives, I've had one that just became a paperweight without any warning whatsoever and it was this experience that taught me how important it is to make back ups. It had childhood family photos on it made from 35mm slides. I still have the slides but have long since sold the slide scanner that I used to copy them. The slides took me several weeks to copy after work in the evenings as well. To get my pictures back, I would need to buy another slide scanner and invest a lot of time that I just don't have to do a job that I've done once already!