Compter imaging and back up the why and how of it all

You may ask yourself why on earth would I ever back up or image my computer? Well there are multiple reasons but lets just start with some basics....
Lets say you have such a bad case of viruses even your local tech can't save what you have.... and now because you have nothing to restore it you have to start all over...
Now the same can happen with a hard drive melt down or any number of things happening to your hardware... nothing to save your computer and no back up you've just lost a good amount of information, pictures ect.
Now I know that you all aren't like my husband and I who print every picture and have it put in picture books by the wonderful ritz camera people. Once its gone its gone, so now that you know that this happens(more often then you would think) what should you do about it? Imaging. Imaging is literally taking the computer and making a copy of it and putting it on an external hard drive or disc(I personally suggest external hard drive) and poof you have a pure copy of your computer down to the software and operating system you had on it before a malfunction! Now the suggestion is to image your computer for every time you change something in the registry an example being new software. But I would do it once a week (Also make sure that your computer is virus free of a world of confusing issues and sadness will take place.)So that if something does happen that is out of your control you can just reformat and replace everything that you have. Now the software you can use for this it O&O DiskImage Express which of course can be found at FILEHIPPO I also suggest Norton Ghost and Acronis True and many others that you have to pay for in and since I'm on this Here is the TOP TEN for 2011. You can get a good amount of them for the try before you buy setting at Download by CNET (the link is attached just search Computer imaging/ Backup). But I still stick to my free ware because anything free is better than paying. Now about all of this when you download just follow the given instructions and you will be on your way to imaging in no time. Now for back up windows has a good backup setting but its not something I prefer over another Program on FileHippo Called Recuva now I prefer this because if you accidentally deleted something or a virus destroyed it the Recuva program can bring it back un-infected ect. Backing up however will just restore files picture mp3's and so on nothing hug like your operating system this is good if something was lost in a virus removal or like I said before an accidental deleting. I suggest you back up your computer (virus free of-course) once a month or by weekly it really all depends on what you're doing on your computer and how often your uploading pictures or files.
Now enough on my ranting, just remember all of these given links are on the side bar of my blog!