Steam is a great service: log in on any PC and play the games you’ve paid for.  The only downside is the download; modern games are between one and five gigabytes, which makes for a long download.  Or after you reformat your system and go to start playing games but have to wait a day for Steam to download them all again.
Luckily steam has a backup feature: right click on your game in the Steam Games menu and select “backup games files”.

You’ll be prompted for a location: I’m saving my …

If you don’t back up your files at some point you will lose them.  We rely on mechanical storage to keep our information and inevitably it will fail.  People used to say it didn’t matter since it was only a resumé or invitation on a home PC: that’s changed since we buy our books and music online and take our photos and videos digitally.
A backup is a copy of your files somewhere else: CD or DVD, other PC, , or in this case online.  There are some excellent free services …

I’ve gushed extensively about the wonder that is Windows Home Server.  I recently gave Windows Small Business Server 2008 a spin to check it’s backup handling but it left me wanting: no current Windows platform backup program gets as much done at such a low cost as Windows Home Server.
For the small business backup is key.  You probably have file sharing set up on your local file server and nightly backups of that data, most likely to a removable hard drive or NAS device.  You may even have a dedicated …

There are two basic types of external hard drives for sale: those that use 3.5″ hard drives and those that use 2.5″ hard drives.  The 3.5″ units typically have an external power supply, multiple connection types (USB, eSATA, Firewire) and have some sort of stand to keep them in position.  The 2.5″ units have no external power connections and normally connect via USB.
The important item here is that the 3.5″ units are designed to remain stationary while the 2.5″ units are designed to be mobile.  It’s this alone that should …