The time has come - your hard drive is dead or perhaps you've accidentally hit the delete key and completely wiped out your documents directory and everything in it. Don't panic - if you've been faithful about doing your backups you just need to restore your data and you'll be up and running in no time.

How you restore your data will depend a great deal on how you backed it up. So let's look at a few of the options.

• If you used a drag and drop method to copy data files to another medium you will simply have to use drag and drop to return them to the place of origin. You may have to reinstall or repair some software programs using the original installation disk if the programs were corrupted too.
• If you used the Backup Wizard supplied by XP, open the Wizard and follow the restore process. You will need to have your backup medium in place.
• If you used a tape backup device it most likely came with software so follow the prompts for data restore.

Restoring data is no more difficult than making the backup to begin with. Be diligent about completing your backups and when the time comes you will be able to quickly restore and be up and running in no time.

Doing regular backups without writing over the last one can minimize data loss if a backup also has become corrupted. If you have more than one backup you may be more likely to find them, because you spent more time making them.

For home use or for a small business you could use a CD or DVD, or you could invest in a tape backup system. Tape is typically for small to medium businesses that need a few hundred gigabytes or even several terabytes of storage space. The smallest tape drives are actually at about 65 gigabytes stored in a compressed format.

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