Links: Volcanoes

Anticipating and Avoiding Personal Computer Disasters
The most common computer-related advice is backup, backup, backup (your data). While it's well worth doing -- and when did YOU last back up your hard drive? -- other simple practices can provide deeper peace of mind and avoid nasty PC surprises. The reason for this is simple: today's computers are much more powerful and capable than devices of just a few years ago, so we depend heavily on them. And since they're increasingly complex, they can fail in new and distressing ways Backup methodology choices include file-level, image backup, full/incremental, etc. If you don't do full or image backups, be sure to protect all application data -- some apps store files in out-of-the-way locations. Keep data separate from software -- it greatly simplifies backup and recovery. Back up software or patches you download. A friend's close call of nearly losing family photos stored on his PC reminded him how precious they were, though he'd taken them for granted. A long-term issue is that storage media deteriorates, and sometimes becomes obsolete (how many eight-track tapes have you seen lately?).