You tell me you're all backed up. Really? When was the last time? What have you done since? Have you worked on your tax return or spent a night with Quickbooks? Maybe it was the paper you worked on all night, but haven't turned in yet?

Imagine turning on your computer and hearing that dreaded clicking sound that says your computer's hard drive has crashed. All your documents are gone. Your precious music collection. Years of photographs. All gone.

Now comes the sickening feeling: what is really backed up? what have I lost?

Even if your documents were backed up, you'll still have to reload your operating system and programs and fiddle with the configuration screens (assuming you can find all the drivers). How long will it take to get your machine up and running again?

What if I told you that backing up, backup that you can count on, was easy and automatic? What if I told you that there was no reason for the pain, regret and loss that accompanies a hard drive crash?

It is hard to write about Rebit 5 without sounding like a script for an infomercial, but the truth is Rebit 5 ($39.95) is the best, easiest, and most comprehensive "belt and suspenders" backup you can get for a home PC.

The best utilities do a useful job, simply. They are nearly transparent; you barely know they are there. Quietly, elegantly, they push ahead of you as you work, making the load lighter. Fences, by Stardock, does its job just this way and is one of my favorite programs I use every day.

I am an unabashed fan of Seagate's Replica, the automatic backup device so simple a chimp could operate it.  What I didn't know when I wrote the original glowing review was that the software that drives the Replica, that makes it easy to use and incredibly powerful, was licensed from a company called Rebit and that the software is available from them so that you can use it with any drive.

"Do you talk to your computer often?" my sister asked yesterday when we were chatting on the phone. She heard me swearing at it when I was in the middle of attempting to upgrade to Windows 7. The truth is I do talk to my computer frequently ("please don't crash, not now, please"). The problem is it rarely understands me, and almost never listens, even if it does. Voice recognition software has promised to change all that - it even got snuck into Vista. But, the truth is more than ten years since I first tried voice recognition, its results have been pretty comical.

Replica from Seagate has quietly revolutionized the backup business for PCs. There are few products that receive “Must-Have” status, but no PC should be running today without a Replica backup system attached. It is cheap, simple to operate, and nearly foolproof. Replica not only backs up you documents – it provides complete image restoration if your computer is hit by virus or hard disk failure!

I prefer testing software under dispassionate circumstances, but today's review of Recuva was performed with beads of sweat running down my forehead: My photos were missing! Could Recuva get them back?

Iolo originally sent me a copy of System Mechanic ($34.95) to review last year.  My original results were mixed.  It reported a number of errors, but after running the suggested corrections, things didn't run any better.

Perhaps it was a case of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it".  I quietly uninstalled the program and didn't think much about it until today when my system started acting very wonky.

UPDATE: Media Monkey has launched a beta version of their program that purports to correct the problem addressed in this article.  I'll be posting a review soon.

There are so many ways to screw up a working computer. Getting hit with a virus suck. But, there are other ways. Spyware, even badly behaved programs can put you into meltdowns that can't be resolved by anything but a reinstall.  With kids going back to school, this is an ideal time (before the rush of homework assignments) to make sure that you're backed up!