Woe to the sysadmin who trusts their UPS to work as expected.  It turns out that some UPSs won't warn you when the battery is dead or low.  You find out it's not functioning when you unplug it. 

If you're going to use a large external hard drive, for archival or simple backup purposes, here are the pros and cons of different cases:

External "Toaster"-type adapters

Usually, a web host will give you FTP access to a directory and a web interface. A button in the web interface will produce a .ZIP file with the database contents, and you can download it via FTP.

TBD

TBD

The simplest way to backup an IMAP email account, like a Gmail or Aol Mail account, is to use desktop client software.

With more and more work being done "in the cloud" with web-based applications that store data on a remote server, edited through a web browser (or specialized client application), you'll want to backu

When you have multiple computers, you might want to put your files on a USB flash disk (aka a thumb drive or jump drive), and backup data to your computer's disks.

How to Backup is a free online mini-book explaining basic ideas about how to backup your network, backup technologies, and backup strategies to keep your systems online, and your data available.

If you have a laptop that you travel with, consider getting a dock for your office desk. If your laptop isn't dockable (because it's a "home" laptop computer), then, get a universal dock.

Websites are archives. A website that isn't an archive is one that displays a lot of "404 errors" - file not found.

In a typical office, several people have to read a document - the writers, the editors, a manager, the signatory to the document, and possibly some artists.

The file naming convention I use starts the name with a date: YYMMDD-file-name.ext

An archive is an organizational strategy for data.

A simple, transparent way to backup a personal computer is with an external hard drive or USB flash drive.

You don't need special software to do this - just copy the files.