Last semester right before finals, every student’s nightmare became my reality. My hard drive crashed. I took a vow that from there on out I would back up my work. I waited two weeks for my computer to be fixed, but by that point the idea of backing up my work vanished from my mind. My only concern outside my summer internship was working on my tan. Any work that I did do for my internship was saved to the company computer.

Once classes started this semester, I vaguely remembered the promise I had made to back up my work; but, at this point, what was there to back up? I had written a few papers and some articles, but nothing too substantial. I decided to wait another two weeks.

That was a big mistake. Last Saturday, I was revisited by the blue screen of death, as the computer technician informed me. For those of you who have never seen this screen, consider yourselves lucky. When this screen comes up, you can’t access any of your files; unless you are smart and have your work backed up. Once again, I did not.

If you don’t have your work backed up, DO IT NOW. That way if your computer crashed, you will still have all your files saved. Flash drives, or memory sticks, are not much bigger than a tube of lipstick and are relatively cheap. I use these to save important word documents. You can also get an external hard drive, which can copy everything on your current hard drive. These are more expensive, but definitely worth it.

If your computer crashes and you don’t have your work backed up, you can usually pay to have it retrieved. When my computer crashed, my school charged me about $30 to save all my important documents and pictures. Songs from your i-pod can easily be restored with programs like Music Rescue or Senuti.

Rather than waiting for my computer to get fixed, the route I took was a little impractical. I splurged and bought the MacBook that I have always wanted, along with an external hard drive of course.