What should a home computer user do to prevent data loss in case of a fire or other catastrophic incident?

Say you have years of priceless data stored on your hard drive and all your install disks are at home. Then your whole house burns to the ground, and while you were busy trying to save less important things like, oh say, your kids, you totally forgot to disconnect your computer from everything and carry it out too. All that data would be lost.





What would you possibly recommend to prepare for and prevent such loss?

What should a home computer user do to prevent data loss in case of a fire or other catastrophic incident?
It's always a good idea to back up important files either on to CD's or an external drive. And not just to protect important data from being lost in case of a catastrophic event such as a fire or natural disaster, but in case of hard drive failures.





The life of a hard drive is estimated to be around 10 years, so if your's is getting up there in age, it might be a good idea to start backing up files now.





Really important files, like home or office inventories, that you need to prove loss to your insurance company in case of fire or other disaster, should be placed on CD's, then placed in a safety deposit box at a bank.





ADDED COMMENT:





Fireproof boxes are only good if the fire is put out quicky. Most boxes will at best have a 1 hour fire rating, meaning the internal temperature of the safe will not exceed 350° when exposed to external temperatures of over 1700°.





How will a CD or external hard drive handle being exposed to a 350° temperature? I don't think very well. The burning point of paper is somewhere around 450°, but ask yourself, at what temperature does plastic begin to warp, to become soft and distorted?
Reply:You should store you file on the internet server. there are free and paid service.
Reply:Use an external USB drive and backup all your valuable data. Once done leave the drive with a friend or relative.





wdw
Reply:You can buy a fireproof safe for a couple of hundred dollars


You can buy an external hard drive witrh back up software for $150.





Once a week, take your external hard drive out of the safe and back up your computer to this external hard drive, and then return it to the safe.





Anything safe needs some action, this is easiest.
Reply:Perfect answer to your question man! You go online to google.com, search 'free online file storage' you will get some free sites that you can store a limited amount of data for free. Just write down the username and password for all of your accounts and if anything happens to your computer you are totally fine!!
Reply:I would backup all your data you want saved. You could get CDs or an external hard drive, or other external storage device.
Reply:Using some sort of back up media ( CD, external hard drive ) is highly recommended. I agree with the person who suggested a fireproof box. They are inexpensive and large enough to house your valuable data.


I also wouldn't recommend keeping all your very important files on the hard drive just because of the possibility of failure and the remote possibility of theft.


I believe many people are victims of identity theft by hackers because they leave this all important information on their machines and fail to properly secure their machines by turning off non-essential services. Rather than dive into the nitty gritty of computer knowledge, save yourself some heartache and get those files off your computer.