Why is this important?
This is important because all computers will crash at some point. All of them. The hard drive is one of the few moving parts on a computer- and it is vulnerable to crashing.
-You
need to make back up copies of your important stuff- your files, folders,
pictures, and data. Always. I learned the hard way, accidentally losing
a 14-page paper that was due, of course, the next morning. I had to stay up all night and do it all over
from scratch- but I will never make that mistake again. And neither will you, once something like
that happens to you. (And it will.)
-Save
often when you are working on something- save every ten minutes. Or, save for whatever time period you are
willing to give up. If don’t mind redoing
a half-hour's work from scratch, save every half-hour.
-NEVER have only one copy of anything important- always have a backup. ESPECIALLY never have your only copy of something on a floppy disk. Floppies are notoriously unreliable, 20-year old technology and you are just asking for trouble. Every single term, people come in with their only copy of something on a corrupted disk (with the paper due the next class, of course)--
Sorry. Its gone. Not much we can do with a bad disk.