Computer data is no different. A peek into the hard drive or USB drive of a typical desktop at home or at office would reveal the huge amounts of data that has been collected over the years irrespective of its relevance to the present moment or for the near future. Most hard drives contain an assortment of data.

Multimedia data encompasses audio files, video clippings / movies and digital photographs. Rarely do people store entire movies or promotional releases for an extended period, in their hard disk because of the large sized files. Small amateurish video recordings of family events, photographs (of the family, friends and relatives) downloaded from a digital camera and the favourite musical tracks are usually stored on the hard drive.

Laptops and the desktop PCs usually hold an assortment of correspondence i.e. official and personal. Many a time, physical copies of these correspondences are not maintained simply because of the comforting thought that a physical copy can be printed out and filed at any time. These correspondences are usually created with the help of a text editor or spreadsheet packages. E-mail correspondences also fall into this category.

A very important category of data that is treasured on most of the computers, is the address book and the bookmarks of your favourite Internet sites (it doesn't matter if you have lost count of them). These can be stand-alone or built into various packages like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Internet Explorer etc. This address book facility is to e-mail, what the calculator is to mathematics. We are getting indolent by the day.

Of course, how can a computer not be a vital financial tool for your household accounts or your bank transactions? Households, today, desire to emulate smart corporates (corporates desire profit, whereas households desire savings!), when it is a question of managing finances. The desire begins and ends there. So, the household income and expenditure are faithfully consigned to the computer's storage.

As children, most of us have created scrapbooks to record our pet projects. From a dried fossilised leaf to pictures of superstars, superheroes, superbikes and beautiful sceneries, these scrapbooks gave a glimpse of our inner likes. The home PC also contains an extension of that physical scrapbook. Cookery recipes, beauty tips, information on mysticism, e-books, the disorganised ramblings of your intended future magnum opus etc. are also recorded in the computer's hard disk.

Let it be your official or personal correspondence (though it may be three years old), digital photographs / video (however hazy or red-eyed it may be), address book (which may contain expired e-mail IDs or phone numbers), household accounts (it never tallies!) or the first three pages of your incomplete bestseller, these are prime candidates for regular backup (when you remember to do so) or are scarcely paid any attention. The reasoning for backing them up is very simple. You may never know when you will need them!

This data potpourri can be a few trifling megabytes or a couple of gigabytes. Breaking up this data into categories (For example: official, personal, correspondence, entertainment, mine, theirs, etc.) is usually resorted to (not out of any display of organisational skills), but to separately store them on inexpensive compact discs or digital video discs rather than storing them on expensive storage media like external hard drives or tape cartridges etc. is not done.

It is a fact that most computers hold different varieties of data i.e. the relevant and the unimportant, the recent and the ancient, thereby necessitating that order has to be established amidst this chaos.

Thus indiscriminate backing up of data, on a regular basis, takes up more time than an orderly backing up of data and does not serve the intended purpose. It is also easier to automate the backing up of desired data, when the data is organized. This also frees up maximum space on the hard drive as well as the backup medium, due to the lack of clutter. Regular backups are advised in organised data environments. Without any semblance of order, simply backing up this heterogeneous data mix from the hard drive would be tantamount to looking for the proverbial lost needle in the barn, barnyard, estate grounds and the haystack! Happy hunting, to the disorganized.