If you fail to plan a backup strategy, you can plan on the failure of your data recovery efforts should the inevitable happen. Don't procrastinate, back up your data today. A lot of the information below will relate to the home user but certainly could apply to a small business as well.

Beware of the mad scientist... A techie (or company) who peddles the hopes of saving a business a lot of money by offering a solution with either inferior hardware and/or recommending an open source software solution. By inferior hardware, I mean using hardware that does not suit a company's needs. In theory, a company with 50 users could use a PC with a 1GHz processor and 512MG of RAM, as a Peer-to-Peer central file server, but this really would not be an adequate solution. The mantra that you should always be repeating when faced with the decision of implementing a new IT solution is "you get what you pay for". How often does that simple phrase come back to haunt the unfortunate company that decides not to heed its simple warning? You will always, and I mean always, pay more in the long run for these home grown solutions. Whether it be during the installation, where a techie will be paid hourly to work out all of the bugs and tweak their solution for your specific environment, or for the long term woes that come from the lack of support with the eventual home-grown solution. This will also include the loss of money which often results from the lack of user productivity, not to mention the complaints and hit in employee confidence you will soon encounter by taking the low road.

In a perfect world, there would be world peace, an extra million dollars in everyone's bank account, and every company would believe in taking strategic & proactive approach to preventing problems on their PCs and network.  Unfortunately, as everyone knows, it's not a perfect world.  In this article, I won't go in to the first two (which would be nice), but will instead focus on the last unfortunate reality.  As sure as there are death and taxes, most  companies will continue to "react" to problems as they occur, and spend more money in doing so.  If they (individuals and companies) just spent the necessary money up front and took a proactive approach, many of the problems they will encounter (and believe me, they will happen), may have been prevented. It's like watching a horror movie and yelling at the screen after the character hears a noise coming from the basement..."Hey, why are you going to the basement?  Who goes to the basement during a thunderstorm when there's a psychopathic killer on the loose in your neighborhood!" 

With the proliferation of computers, inexpensive wireless routers, and plug n' play hardware nowadays, many homes are operating with small networks.  Behind some of these home networks lies a newbie, a possible future techie in training, and from that ever increasing pool of applicants spawn what I like to call the "professional hobbyist".  A lot of the unnecessary work that I come across in the field today is the result of people who have little to no work experience, no education, and certainly no professional certifications in the field of network administration, performing network administrative tasks.  Just because someone can unbox & plug in a wireless router (security risks and all) doesn't make them an expert in the field of wireless networks.  This is usually where the average, everyday citizen takes their first steps to becoming a "professional hobbyist" (PH).  These first initial steps then foster the belief that the PH knows all about the complexities of installing & configuring a network, and can take this knowledge with them to the corporate world and make some money.