If like many of us you rely heavily on your MS Office Outlook program here's a must have tool for backing up the outlook.pst file which is where most of the information the program uses (emails, contacts, calendars etc) is stored:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=9003
For detailed instructions on using this tool visit this site:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/238782
Your data will be backed up using the configuration settings you choose or you can do it manually at any time.