Aug 13 2007
If you purchased and installed an external hard drive to backup your computer, you were probably asked this question when setting up the backup software.  You may have been inclined to just backup your My Documents Folder, but you should probably backup more.  The reason is many times popular programs save their critical data in a Folder other than My Documents.

For example, Outlook Express/Outlook (emails, calendarcontacts, etc), Quicken, and QuickBooks (all financial transactions) are just some of these type of programs.  Each of these programs save your critical information in Folders deep within your computer.

The best practice is to setup your backup software to do a complete backup of your entire hard drive, not just your My Documents Folder.  This way all your critical data is saved and can be retreived in the event your computer crashes.