While working as a Mac Genius at the Apple Store, one of my most unhappy tasks was to tell customers that we were unable to rescue any important data from their dying hard drive.  Some customers received this news with quiet acceptance, while others became very upset that their vacation photos were lost, or that thousands of dollar’s worth of iTunes downloads were gone.  These customers learned the hard way that backups are critical to maintaining the vast amounts of data that even novice computer users accumulate.  As we move more and more of our lives onto our computers, data backups have become as important as maintaining homeowner’s insurance, and performing regular maintenance on our cars.  If our data is so important, why do so many of us fail to perform regular backups?  It is a fact that EVERY hard drive will eventually fail.  Failure could occur 1 week after you take your new computer out of the box, or it may not happen for 2 or 3 years.  This is why regular backs are so critical.