If you hear a noise coming from your computer that you don't recognize, get someone that knows something about computers to listen to it. Computers should not make clanking or grinding noises if they are functioning correctly. Anything that sounds like metal slapping together would be a bad thing to hear from your computer. The next part of this story is the real reason for this column.

After I told him that the computer hard drive had died and there was very little hope of retrieving any of the data, he proceeded to tell me about all of the pictures that he had saved on his computer of his children that he would never be able to replace. He told me that there were over 1000 documents and spreadsheets on the system that he used for work that would be very hard to recreate. He told me of all of the e-mail messages that he had meticulously saved and that would never be able to replace. He told me about a family tree that he had been working on for the past 6 months that he had to save because of all the time that he had invested in researching all of the information.

We have a sign on the front wall of our office that is there specifically for this type of occasion. Procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Can anyone guess what kind of disaster recovery plan this customer had in place? There was no backup of any of the data that was so important to him. No Zip drive, tape drive, not even a floppy. His plan was that he did not have a plan. I would rather waste the time on planning for disaster and not needing it than the other way around.

How much time and effort would it take you to recover from a computer crash? If your hard drive decided to give up the ghost tomorrow, what would you do? Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place so that you could get back to business without any major loss of time or money? Most people depend on their computer for their daily personal and professional lives. They have years of data and documents and no plan for disaster recovery in place. You do not have to have an elaborate plan, but some sort of plan would be nice. Back up at least your essential files, especially those that you have created. You can always reinstall programs from the program CD, or the system recovery CD that comes with most new computers, but documents, spreadsheets, and so forth need backing up, otherwise you risk losing them forever. I like to have all of my essential files in the My Documents directory. This includes the "pst" file that Outlook holds all of its information in, the data file for my Microsoft Money program, and any other documents that I create or want to save. This makes it easier for me to recover in case there is a problem or I change computers. I have the means to fully backup my system if I wanted to but I choose not to. If you do not have a means to do a full system backup, then you should think about moving all of your essential files into one directory so that it will be easier for you to back up just your data.

Some of the older programs kept data files in the same directory as the program files. The easiest way to track them down is to use the find command on the Windows 95 or 98 Start Menu. Search for files by the extension, then cut, and paste them into the folder of your choice. After all of your files are moved you need to make sure that any new files will besaved to the new location. To do this you need to go into the preferences or options of the program to change the default location of the files. Older versions of Word will default to the folder that is listed in the "Start In" box of the shortcut. The same is true for older versions of WordPerfect.

Outlook will ask you where the "pst" file is located if you move it to the My Documents directory. Browse to the new location and you are back in business. The name of the folder is not the important thing here. What is important is to be organized and have a solid plan. My plan is that everything that I want and have to keep is kept in the My Documents folder and is backed up into the Data folder on our server at the office. The server is backed up daily to a tape. Do you see the plan? In my case, the operating system and programs are not an important part of the computer. I install and uninstall so many programs on my system that I tend to format my drive about every six months when there is something new that I want to try.

There are a number of devices and tools available for disaster recoveries that are available on the market today. The simplest and most cost efficient are on your computer when you buy it. It is called the floppy drive. This will not hold very much data, only about 1.44MB. This is the equivalent of about 15 to 20 average Word documents. You can fit more if you use a compression or backup program such as WinZip or Microsoft Backup. Some of the newer computers are being sold with either a Zip drive or an LS120 Drive. The Zip will hold 100 or 250 MB of data while the LS120 will hold 120MB. The LS120 can also be added on to most older systems for about $80 plus the cost of the disks if you can install it yourself. The LS120 would be the best option for a new system because it will also read standard floppies.

If you plan to utilize this method, then you will probably only be backing up your documents. You could either copy the folder to the floppy, LS120 or Zip, or use a backup program to compress the data onto the disks. This is dependent on the size of your data folder. As an example, my Outlook .pst file is over 40 MB. My data folder is quickly approaching 200 MB and has about 2700 files in it. This rules out the floppy and almost rules out the Zip or LS120. You can right click on your data folder and left click on properties to find out how much room the files will take up.

Full system backups are the most effective means of disaster recovery. Backups are OK on read/write CDs, but they are not done automatically. If the total size of the backup exceeds the size of one CD, you have to be there to replace the CD when needed. Therefore, this and any other system that requires user attention are likely to result in infrequent full backups. You need to have something that you can schedule to backup and know that it will be done without you having to remember to start a program or change something out halfway through.

A backup system that is too much trouble to use regularly is not use ­ful. A good Tape backup device would be the easiest solution. The Seagate Tapestore Travan tape holds 10 GB (20 GB compressed) The drive, which costs about $330, can be scheduled to automatically perform backups without interfering with the operation of the computer. Backup Exec is included with the drive. Its 120 MB per minute transfer rate seems to be about the same with an IDE or SCSI interface. Windows 95 and 98 provide a good backup utility called BACKUP in the Programs \Accessories\System Tools folder. There is no scheduler with the standard Windows backup program so this needs to be your last choice. The best commercial backup software is from either Seagate or Cheyenne. These usually come with the backup device so be sure to check the contents of the package to be sure what you are paying for. You don't want to have to buy the backup software separate from the drive.

If you want to go with a simpler solution you might want to try the Zip 250 drive. You can get an external USB drive for about $140 or an internal Atapi drive that you can install inside your desktop for about $130. The disks will cost you about $15 each. You can use these to back up your data folder or even the whole drive if you have the patience to change the disks. The USB drive is an external drive that you would be able to use on any system that has a USB port on it.

Computer hardware does not fail when you are on vacation. You all know that it will fail when you can least afford it. This is the reason to have a disaster recovery plan. It is always better to be prepared and not need it than the other way around.