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	Free Computer Clean-Up Fix your computer right now - free tips and advice on how to clean up your PC or notebook computer.  Read our easy-to-follow steps on how to clean up your computer and the best computer virus protection.  Once you are finished, make sure you protect your computer from harmful viruses and spyware - learn how to protect your PC.

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Back-Up Your Important Files
There are many ways you can unintentionally lose information on a computer. A child playing the keyboard like a piano, a power surge, lightning, floods. And sometimes equipment just fails.  Even hard drives will eventually fail.

If you regularly make backup copies of your files and keep them in a separate place, you can get some, if not all, of your information back in the event something happens to the originals on your computer.  There are many efficient back up solutions to help you protect your files.  External hard drives, burning CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMS, Zip Drives, Network Drives, are a few examples of back-up devices.  The most robust solution is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) hard drive - that is an external hard drive connected to your wireless network allowing you to back-up files wirelessly from any computer in your home -- check out the latest Network Attached Storage Drives.

Deciding what to back up is highly personal. Anything you cannot replace easily should be at the top of your list. Before you get started, make a checklist of files to back up. This will help you determine what to back up, and also give you a reference list in the event you need to retrieve a backed-up file. Here are some file suggestions to get you started:

How many days worth of information could you afford to lose if your computer crashed? What about if your office or home burned down? What about if most of your city was wiped out by a tornado or a flood?

The answers to these questions will tell you how often you should do a backup, and roughly where you should store them.

The computer crash one is for your most frequent backup - usually a daily backup, stored in your office or home.

The office-burned-down is for your next most frequent backup, usually a weekly backup stored in a secure place in another building - possibly a friend's place, or a friendly business whose backups you store. (Exchange backups each week.)

The final is often a monthly or six-monthly backup, and is stored somewhere distant - and in some cases, isn't done at all. It's a matter of choice, and what risks you want to take.

Any backup plan is simply a way of controlling risk. You risk losing a day's, a week's, a month's or a year's data - instead of risking losing it all. When devising your backup plan, think about how much risk you are willing to take.

Check out the latest back-up solutions.

By following our steps above and the How To Clean Up Your Computer instructions, you should be able to keep your computer running for a long time.

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