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Irreplaceable files are ones you've created or purchased that you keep on your computer's hard drive and nowhere else. These can include your papers, work-related spreadsheets, artwork, music, e-mails, personal records, and anything else which you either created or purchased to place on your computer.

Installed software titles do not constitute irreplaceable files, but if you have saved documents or games, you will need to back those up as well.

Backup strategies will vary from person to person, and from computer to computer. Some computers have CD-RW devices which can burn files onto a CD. Some people prefer to use USB storage devices or even secondary hard drives to back up their critical files. Still others prefer to move their files over the network to another computer, or to a remote server. You should always have a strategy for backing up your critical and irreplaceable files.

Media Type	Pros	Cons
CD-R/RW	Many computers come with CD-R/RW technology today	Can lose data if scratched. Some discs can only be written to once.
USB Flash Drives	Very portable, rugged, easily rewritable, less wasteful.	Larger capacity can be expensive. Easily lost.
External Hard Drive	Very large amounts of cheap and reliable storage.	None, this is the recommended method
University Network Share / secure FTP	Centrally backed up. Accessible from anywhere online.	Requires Internet access. Can be slow, especially for large files. Space is limited to 1 GB.

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