I am not exactly the best one to talk about this probably as I am not one that often followed this rule. But I did have a situation occur that made me realize how important it really is and that yes something can happen to me too. Not that I believed nothing would happen to me or my computer, I just didn't think like it would if that makes sense. When you work at home, you use your computer for a lot if not everything. It is important to be able to access all of the important stuff about your business or whatever job you work at home doing.
This isn't a major catastrophe for me since most of my stored info on my computer was mostly pictures that I have on other devices such as cameras and cell phones, but it is a bit of a headache still. I have stuff on one of my laptops that I cannot get now and tho not as important as some people may have, I have files of information I was going to blog about.
I now know the importance of backing up!! My newer computer completely died on Black Friday. Yup just shut down and no power, no lights, nothing. I have heard of some great places online to store information, but I am not sure what ones to recommend yet since I have not tried any yet. I am still working on collecting everything and remembering things that were on my computer. I should be able to have the data extracted if it is not the hard drive that is damaged.
I think for now I will make cds every couple weeks when I have important files (and I do not recommend storing personal information on your computer, that I never have on my computer.) Anything about my work at home adventures or my other blogging adventures will make their way to discs quite often for now. I would like to find a secure and reliable place to store my files online and not just on my computer (without stock piling discs), but at the moment I am not sure who to recommend.
I just wanted to share this experience with all of you, it can be devastating to anybody and if you work at home it can be very devastating. Just losing a computer is bad enough, but information you were going to use makes it that much harder.