Smokey the Bear taught “Only you can prevent forest fires”. I learned to "Take a bite out of crime" from McGruff the Crime Dog.

The computer world needs mascots. Power outages, forgetfulness and other accidents cause people to lose important data unnecessarily. We need friendly animals to bombard us with backup reminders.

To backup our data means we make a duplicate copy of important files. It's like making a copy of our last will and testament. If anything happens to the original, we can still call our lawyer and get that copy.

USB Flash Drive
For saving small files or temporary storage, meet Flash the Dolphin. Flash tells us "You'll be AOK with USB!” A USB flash drive is a thumb-sized gizmo you plug in a USB port on any computer. You can then read and write to that flash drive just like any other drive on that machine. Like Flash the Dolphin, these drives are fast and mobile. Available in many denominations, a 512 MB drive is $50. Your computer will need a USB port.

CD and DVD
Disco the Squirrel says “With a disk and a laser, your data is safer!" A CD can hold 650 MB, and a DVD over 4 GB (4000 MB). Data copying takes slightly longer, but CDs and DVDs are best for large files and a squirrel's specialty, long-term archiving. Costing a couple dollars maximum per disk, you will also need a computer with a CD or DVD writer. Most computers today come with writers, or they can be purchased for under $50. CDs and DVDs come in either a permanent write-once format or as a reusable "rewritable disk".

External Hard Drive
Elephants are bulky, heavy and hard to transport. But that big brain holds lots of information. Whoppo the Elephant's rallying cry is "Before a PC crash-dives, use an external hard drive!" These work similar to a USB flash drive but their capacity is much higher. Many of these come with software allowing you to easily backup everything on your computer. In addition to backing up individual files, you can take a "snapshot" of your PC. This allows full data and software recovery if you lose your entire system. $100 will buy storage for 80 GB (80,000 MB), which is plenty for most computers. Your computer will need a USB port.

You'll notice that this list leaves out Old Faithful, a.k.a. the floppy disk. Much less reliable than the technologies above, they're more prone to wear and eventually succumb to corruption from stray magnetic fields and old age. Like Cheez Whiz, the floppy disk is a technology whose glory days have passed. Only use a floppy if no other options are available.