Your music, movies, and other media are no less important than your contact database and business documents, yet we often forget to include them in our backup plans. Even worse, many of us have no backup plan at all. That's dangerous. As any seasoned computer jockey will tell you, data loss is not a question of if but when. And if you think backups are a hassle, weigh it against the tragedy of losing all of your music, photos, and videos.

Second Copy is a utility that supports automatic, incremental backups.

There are plenty of ways to archive all this stuff: optical media (CDs and DVDs), external or secondary hard drives, and even media-friendly online backup services such as Streamload. Which option should you use?The safest answer is at least two of them, as it's always a good idea to have a backup of your backup. Copying your valuable files to a safe place can be a hassle, but you can make it easier on yourself by establishing a consistent backup interval--say, once every one, three, or six months.

	How useful was this tip for you?  Very  Somewhat  Not at all    View results

Let's start with Streamload. A free account nets you a whopping 25GB of online storage space. Just upload your files (be patient--uploads tend to be much slower than downloads) and presto: a safe offsite backup you can access from any PC. The only hitch with the free account is that your download bandwidth is limited to 100MB per month. If disaster strikes and you need to retrieve all your files, you'll probably need to upgrade to one of the fee-based accounts, which start at $4.95 per month for unlimited storage and a number of other options.

Backing up to a second hard drive is a fast and easy solution, especially if you use a utility that supports automatic, incremental backups; that is, at designated times, only those files that have changed or been added since the last backup will be copied to the drive. We recommend something along the lines of Second Copy, a favorite among Download.com users and a bargain at $29.95. Keep in mind, however, that a backup hard drive is just as susceptible to mechanical failure (and, for that matter, virus and spyware infections) as your primary drive--all the more reason to adopt more than one backup solution.

Finally, you can take advantage of the CD and/or DVD burner you already own. Blank media is cheap, especially in bulk, and a single CD can hold upward of 150 MP3s. Even if you have to span your files across multiple discs, it's still an easy way to create a physical (though not scratchproof) backup, since software can handle splitting up the files between the discs. The latest versions of Ahead Nero and Roxio Easy CD Creator include backup utilities for use with optical media. The aforementioned Second Copy works fine, too.

CDs are so 20th century. It's time to liberate your music from those scratch-prone, shelf-hogging, losable platters and turn it into pristine, eminently practical digital files. When you're done, you'll be able to transcode your songs into new formats as needed or even burn them back to CDs, with no loss of fidelity.

Apple iTunes users can rip CDs into the Apple Lossless format.

The secret is lossless compression. Typically, songs ripped from CDs end up as AAC, MP3, or WMA files, all of which are lossy--at least some song data has been stripped in order to make the files smaller. By ripping to a lossless format instead, the files still get compressed, but no sound quality is lost along the way. They're bit-for-bit duplicates of the originals that occupy about half the disk space.

As a result, you can pack your hard drive with CD-quality digital files that can be played, transcoded, or burned, all while keeping your source files intact. It's like having CDs without the CDs.

	How useful was this tip for you?  Very  Somewhat  Not at all    View results

OK, but which lossless format should you choose? One option is to simply rip the uncompressed WAV files straight from your CDs, but they're huge--upward of 50MB per song--and they can't be tagged with song, artist, album, and other desirable information. Another option is FLAC, a popular open-source codec, but most users will probably be better off with either Apple Lossless or WMA Lossless.

These two codecs, accessible within iTunes and Windows Media Player, respectively, let you play your tunes directly--no extra decompression step required--and copy them to portable players that support the formats (iPods support Apple Lossless, and certain PVPs from Creative, iRiver, Samsung, and others support Windows Lossless). Few desktop programs, and even fewer portables, support FLAC, although the Cowon iAudio X5 and the Sonos Digital Music System both do.

Given that iPods currently represent the lion's share of the MP3 players out there, here's how to rip your CDs to the Apple Lossless format:

1. Open iTunes.
2. Click Edit > Preferences, then click the Advanced tab followed by the Importing tab.
3. In the drop-down menu next to Import Using, select Apple Lossless Encoder. Check any of the accompanying options if desired. Then click OK.
4. Insert a CD and wait for iTunes to start importing it, or click the Import button at the upper right if you don't have iTunes set up to import CDs upon insertion.
5. Wait a few minutes while iTunes rips the CD to the Apple Lossless format. Wash, rinse, and repeat with your next CD until they're all ripped.
6. Put your CD collection up for auction. Start using newly liberated bookshelves for actual books.

Don't have the time or the technical savvy to rip your CD collection? The time part we can understand: ripping even a few dozen discs can consume the better part of an afternoon, and if your library numbers in the hundreds, you could be looking at a couple of weekends to get the project done. As for the tech know-how, well...you did read tip 2, right?

Too lazy to rip your own CDs? Send them in to RipDigital, and you'll get them back archived on DVD.

Whatever your excuse, there's someone willing to tackle the job for you. Services such as RipDigital convert your CDs into MP3s or a lossless format. Just ship off your discs using a supplied spindle and prepaid box; in about a week, they'll be back on your doorstep--along with your newly ripped digital music collection. The ripped songs are sent back on one or more DVDs (along with your CDs, of course), so make sure your computer is equipped with a DVD-ROM drive or a DVD burner. Otherwise, you won't be able to read the disc and copy the songs onto your hard drive.

	How useful was this tip for you?  Very  Somewhat  Not at all    View results

The service doesn't come cheap. RipDigital charges $129 for 100 CDs, $179 for 150 CDs, $199 for 200 CDs, and so on. For users who prefer a format other than MP3 (and a bit rate other than the standard, relatively high-quality 224Kbps), the company offers other encoding options--AAC, WMA, and FLAC--at a variety of bit rates, including Apple Lossless and Windows Lossless. Lossless formats are especially popular with digital archivists, for reasons mentioned earlier. The company can also send you a portable hard drive with all the music stored on it, which is a nice option. Of course, special orders will cost you extra; use the online sales form to request a custom quote.