Wouldn't it be wonderful and worth all the tea in China if our computers came with a special forewarning, warning us of any upcoming danger to our computer systems. If Mr. Bill Gates reads this article, my request would be to have a computer built with the following warning: *download now, for some unforeseen reason (possibly weather, power outage, etc.) your computer will crash in approximately three hours*. I am sure that I am not the only one with this need.

As a professional organiser specialising in office organisation, I would be reasonably wealthy if I had a dollar for each of my clients who experienced this computer predicament -- computers crashed and they didn't have their data in any back-up files. I can tell you lots of various scenarios my clients experienced due to their computers crashing. One day they are up, running and work is going on smoothly and in a matter of seconds all their files and data vanished.

Honestly, it recently happened again to me but fortunately I had backed up all my files the week before and was lucky not to lose all of my work. Even with the back-up files I went through an extremely stressful period because without a computer to reinstall my files, my entire life seemed to come to a complete standstill. I truly felt totally disconnected and isolated. No e-mails from colleagues, friends and families. No Internet to connect to the rest of the universe to learn what was going on outside the triangle area. Not being much of a TV watcher, I went through a serious withdrawal stressful time. It was like a small miracle that I was able to function and only dealt with a few particular clients.

We all tend to forget that our computer is a mechanical device and it is inevitable that we will have a problem, especially here in Bermuda where the humidity is quite high. Some of the major causes of computer crashes are: Improper storage; Power outages; Lack of proper ventilation; and Dust.

In my professional opinion, you should back up files at least once a week and as a rule on a system that is used daily you should never go more than a month without a full back-up. If you have just completed a large report project or notice anything peculiar or different about your computer, BACK UP your files immediately! If your work depends on having access to a computer you should have an extra computer unit.

Under the systems tools in your computer, Microsoft offers a step-by-step instruction on how to backup your files and data. If you are not able to organize yourself to do your own backups, there are several businesses offering off-site stored services for you. One local company is Central Filing. There are also websites that office backup service. Sites worth checking into are: www.datalock.com -- which offers different offsite data storage www.ontrack.com -- is a data recovery centre If your computer crashes and you need special parts not available on the Island, check out www.jncs.com they specialize in various motherboards, CPU (central processing unit), and memory components.

Taking just a few minutes to backup your files can be worth a million of stress free minutes! Cindy Swan is a Professional Organiser with over 20 years of office administrative managerial experience. She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organisers. Her columns appears in the business section on the first and third Mondays of the month.