Computer newbies forum: Poll: Would your data be OK if your computer were destroyed?

Yes, offsite internet backups, as well as onsite, external disk backups. I use a backup program called "Retrospect", which allows you to take a snapshot (and/or do incremental backups), and then pick either individual files or hierarchies out of your backup, or recover your whole system from an external hard disk. Very useful, and then doubly backed up offsite in case of a fire or burglary.

15 to 20 years ago it wasn't as easy to back up data as it is today. Now, every computer I own has it's own back up drive, and they are set up to back up pretty frequently. One time last century, I had a computer hard drive fail and all the data on it was lost and I had no back up. It was a pretty frustrating time to say the least. When hard drives began to appear to allow data back up, I purchased at least one for every computer. Right now I have an HP drive that backs up my data every 5 minutes. It only back up new data and adds it to the old back up. I also do a full back up to an external hard drive with Windows 7 back up program. That way if it is ever necessary, I should be able to recreate my computer. Fortunately it has never happened as the newer hard drives seem to more reliable that drives from years past. If you have created something in a program or programs and it is on your computer and you consider it valuable, then you need to install a back up drive. The Beauty of the HP Simple Save drive is that it is backing up so frequently, that everything that I have done over 5 minutes ago is backed up. The Full Windows back up is an additional step that I take to try to prevent a damaging loss that will take me many months to recover from if it can actually be done. If you are reading this and don't have a back up hard drive, buy one as soon as possible and start doing back ups. You will sleep better at night when you are doing this. At one point after my disastrous crash, I was back up to Tapes, and you can be thankful that we have moved beyond that. It was one of the most frustrating periods of my life trying to a back up with a cantankerous tape drive.

My data are in second HDD in my desktop PC.
First of all, you can not totally destroy a desktop PC, cus it's almost impossible for a normal family to get about 3000 degree Centigrade to burn down a PC.
Secondly, in case your HDD case and PCB were burned, you can take your HDD to data restore service company, as long as the disk inside your HDD still have the data. They have equipment to read disk data.

So there's no such question for most of PC users.