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Rosalyn Cronin, an accountant in Ajax, Ont., working with Copetti and Co., knows more than the average person about data backup. Sadly, she gained most of her experience through misfortune.

First, she lost three weeks' worth of data to a computer crash, and not even specialists were able to recover it. Then after they helped her to establish a backup server solution for herself and her four employees, the server was stolen. Three months later, her office was burglarized again.

With such a string of bad luck, you can't blame Ms. Cronin for developing a wry sense of humour about the whole thing. "Luckily they stole the computers before tax season and after tax season, which was really nice of them."

She adds that by the second burglary she'd hidden the server elsewhere in the office and the thieves didn't find it, so recovery was much quicker. "I was able to get new computers and we were up and running in four hours," she says.

Today Ms. Cronin has two servers that are "hot-boxed" to back each other up, and she also does off-site backup with an external hard drive. She and her employees also back up data regularly onto removable flash drives that fit into a USB port, and she's planning to move to an even more automated solution that would back up data daily.

She says she finds herself spotting security issues among her clients, such as vulnerable servers left out in the open, and she warns them about the trouble she went through.

Considering the value of electronic information today it's amazing how many people don't back up their computers, says Mark Bruehler, the Vancouver-based deputy of internal affairs for the tech support firm Geek Squad, which includes data backup and recovery among its services.

"I recommend everybody has a backup, even if they're not a small business, even if they're a personal user. Because most people now, their e-mail is very important to them -- so is almost all the stuff they do daily on a computer," Mr. Bruehler says. "They forget that computers are a mechanical and electronic device, and they can fail."

He recommends a multi-layered solution. Users should buy and back up to an external hard drive, using such software as Norton Ghost from Symantec Corp. or a software solution from Acronis Inc. that creates an "image" of a hard drive, which is like a snapshot of the entire setup so that if your computer crashed you could restore instantly rather than having to reinstall all your programs and settings.

Users also should perform regular, automated backups daily. Mr. Bruehler images his whole hard drive every third day and backs up data daily with an automated solution.

Daily, automated backups are best, says Craig Andrews, director of sales engineering for Symantec, which offers a range of solutions depending on the size of the business.

The company's LiveState Recovery product backs up the whole drive onto a secondary disk, and its Backup Exec copies files from Windows Small Business Server, Mr. Andrews says. Norton Save & Restore is another basic backup solution that suits very small businesses.

Mr. Andrews notes that although backup is critical for small businesses, many do not have a solution in place.

Dee Gibney's business used to be one of those. A writer and filmmaker whose small film and multimedia production company, DG Communications, makes marketing and educational films, she lost two years worth of scripts, all of her financial data and more when her computer crashed last year.

When she took her computer to a company that specializes in the recovery of data, she was told it was irretrievable.

Luckily a neighbour had helped her make a copy of her data before 2003 on CD, and she was able to re-input some of it. But it's the little things that she says she misses, such as an e-mail from a satisfied client that she might have used as a testimonial.

Today she uses three flash drives in rotation to back up her data on a regular basis.

Besides having a solution in place, scheduling backups so you actually do them is also crucial. An Internet-based backup solution can be useful in this task.

Data Deposit Box is a company that pulls data off your system to a centralized, secure server in Toronto at a rate of 1.25 cents a megabyte. People like the system because it is automated, it doesn't require investing a lot of time, and data can be downloaded quickly, says company president Peter Carroll.

"If you have everyday skills then you should have skills for backing up," Mr. Carroll says. The average customer backs up a gigabyte of data, he says, and the company's pay-as-you-go pricing means clients pay only for what they back up.

Data Deposit Box customer Ian Towers is proof that automated, offsite backup can be a lifesaver.

A Montreal-based products manager for the International Air Transport Association and part-time PhD student at Carleton University, he signed up for Data Deposit Box to back up his dissertation. Luckily he did so before his computer was stolen in January.

"I was happily plugging along backing my things up as I was writing, then my laptop was stolen," Mr. Towers says.

"Fortunately I had all the necessary files backed up on Data Deposit Box so I was able to be working the next day."

Data backup tips

To ensure data is backed up properly:

Establish more than one backup option, including a full image of the system as well as daily data backups. Have more than one backup on hand at a time, so if one fails the other is available.

Test backups to make sure you can retrieve your data when you need it.

Automate and schedule backups so the process doesn't rely on one particular person's memory.

Keep at least yearly permanent data backup on CD, and ideally CDs for the past three months. Keep one permanent copy offsite in case of burglary or natural disaster. If you keep your data on a server, hide it where burglars won't find it.

Put one person in the office in charge of backup so there's no confusion over who has the responsibility.

Store your most recent files in the same folder so it's easy to back up everything at once. Separate ongoing work from completed work.