Does one have to back up all the riff-raff with the valuable? Should the biggies receive special treatment over the miniscule data? So many other questions go around in the quest, for what is worth backing up.

A home personal computer would contain a different type of user data compared to the contents of a Server in a corporate environment.

Home users generally store plenty of graphic file formats like .bmp, .jpeg, .tif files etc. which are downloaded from their digital cameras or Sony Handycams. The subject of these photos could be something from as rare and diverse as a bee hovering over a beautiful flower in the backyard of one’s home to the common and abundant photos or movies shot during vacation or outing. Not to be left out are the funny, shocking and absurd images captured for posterity and for one’s own private viewing.

I am the sort of person who feels financially insecure, if every expense and income was not recorded, tabulated and analysed. Most of us, in this category, find it self-sufficient to put it all down on spreadsheets like MS-Excel or Open Office Calc etc. and derive our inferences from them. Then there are the sophisticated type of software, normally referred to as ‘Personal Finance Accounting’ packages, to cater to people who like fancy screens and functions.

After a hard day’s work, most of us would like to sleep it off, finally. Then there are many of us, within this group, who would like to have a Kenny Rogers or Mariah Carey croon to us, as we fall asleep. For keeping us awake during our working hours, we load up on other favourites, screaming to be heard like Black Sabbath or Judas Priest. Then there are the movie trailers and a couple of memorable movies that we keep handy on our hard disks, for viewing during the spare time available during lunch break. The free time may never come, but that’s another plane altogether.

I’ve got a bad habit. I write poetry, short stories and strange sentences that seem to pop out of nowhere. A handy notebook serves half the purpose of jotting them down, just when they float into my head and are permanently lost to deep sleep. My personal computer is updated with these bits and pieces (next day morning or overnight) in the fond hope that I will use them in my best seller, someday. Before this data graces my hard disk, I decipher my jottings and their inner meaning and context, so that I do not lose track of their meaning.

In the 1970s and up to the mid 1990s, I used to see the letter mail that my parents and relatives used to send and receive -- the wait, the familiar postman, the eagerness of expression while reading the mail or composing one (rarely have I seen a lack of expression on the reader’s face, so much so that one could guess whether the mail represented good or bad tidings). It was a bygone era of great deliberation and words could paint pictures. The e-mails that I receive and back up are in the hundreds and also contain trash pertaining to sale offers, weight reduction pills and what not. Who has the time to scan every one of them, in detail?

Each and every one of us, having a home personal computer, usually gathers web pages or digital information (including graphical ones) that pertain to a special area of personal interest or hobby. Mine concerns food and household hints. So, I download oodles of recipes (with the picture of the carefully arranged and attractive end product) and household hints running to several gigabytes. Other favourite downloads are online books, stock market intelligence, and pictures of favourite movie stars.

Then for those of us, who commit the cardinal sin of bringing the work home, there is the usual space reserved by a separate partition or drive letter and far away from all the lighter stuff on the computer. Thankfully, many of us realise that it is best to keep this kind of data to the minimum, on the computer, because it is exposed to the hazards of accidental deletion (oh yeah, the kids somehow managed to delete that particular file, out of all other rubbish. Sounds amazing, isn’t it!).

To Each, His or Her Own

If you think the data is important, back it up and make sure that you can retrieve it. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the world thinks otherwise.

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James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and Computer Forensics see http://www.fieldsassociates.co.uk