Was reading about those folks in CA frantically grabbing stuff from their houses. Saw a picture of someone trying to dump boxes of paper into their car. It wasn't pretty.

Nestled in both our long-term kits and our "grab and go" bags sits a set of CD's. We have family photos, scans of our important documents (license, credit cards, insurance documents, much more), backups of our contact lists and more.
We over 4,000 photographs, at least 300 8 1/2x11 pages of scans and copies of our Quicken files, all of our contact lists and datebook data and more in less than 16 ounces of plastic.

Here's some pointers for making "Data To Go" disks.

If you're an outlook sufferer (sorry, I mean "user") remember that the file "outlook.pst" is everything - your email, contacts and all that...if you back up one file, make it that one.

Try to keep all of your files in ONE folder and back up the ENTIRE folder on a daily basis (I actually "mirror" my documents folder to an external disk via a program that "mirrors" files on my computer, and it's backed up evey five minutes. But I'm crazy.)

Save all images as JPG files (some programs use goofy files like the "max" format which is basically useless on other computers.

If you remember to do it regularly, export your contacts as Text files - anything can read those.

Remember to BACK UP your application CD's - yes, I'm saying make a copy of the CD's that came with your computer, the CD's for programs you bought and so on. Write the license keys right on the CD's AND on the CD sleeves and put the originals in a fire safe. Keep the copies in your long-term kit. You may not be coming home, as some folks in CA are learning.

In todays' society your data is as important as anything else you pack.