Yeah I learned it the hard way too... I didnt back up anything from my old laptop.... a year and then some later it completely crashed and I lost everything, all my school work, photos, microsoft programs and whatever else was on it. =[ it sucks. I had it re built and still have it (granted now the screen fell off and it hangs by wires, the internet does not work and the color colabriation or w/e is off... it still runs lol). I still dont have a good way to back up things but I have a new laptop so I put stuff off this one on the old one and stuff off this one and the old one onto disks. I wanted to get a back up external hard drive but its not a luxury that I can go spend money on anytime ever so i do what I can.