As finals loom on the horizon of this week, horror stories from semesters past ring in my ears about crashed hard drives and lost or destroyed data. This week the Digital Domain is turning its eyes to different software for the purpose of backing up and protecting all of your valuable notes, papers, PowerPoint presentations and other class related digital media.

For Windows users, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare right here. OneCare automates a lot of necessary computer maintenance operations such as Disk Defragmentation, emptying the recycle bin, performing a comprehensive virus scan, and perhaps most importantly, backs up your files to an external hard drive. This back up is so comprehensive that it can restore your settings, programs, and digital media to exactly the way they were on a new computer if a crash does occur.

All these processes (called a 'tune-up' by OneCare) can be executed at anytime from the program, or scheduled to a certain time every day, week, or month.

For Mac users, Apple provides a strong alternative in their Time Machine, which is an innovative and capable back up utility itself and comes packaged with the OSX operating system. According to the Apple website, Time Machine backs up your entire hard drive the first time it is run, and then makes only incremental back ups to save only the files which have been added or altered since your last back up. Time Machine's most attractive feature is its recovery feature, which allows users to travel days and weeks back through back ups to recover any lost files, which is accomplished through a slick and smooth interface.

Both are strong and effective back up utilities which will keep your valuable data safe in the worst case scenario of a catastrophic failure. For either of these programs though, a dependable and large capacity external hard drive will be necessity. Consumer electronics bargain hunters Web site dealhunter frequently provides links to affordable external drives, which make for a very strong investment in the security of your computer.