Secure those PCs: Pay attention to backups and passwords.

Byline: Don Mayhew

Aug. 28--Bill Margeson, chief executive of CBL Data Recovery, knows that most college students don't take computer protection seriously. They share passwords. They don't back up their files. They return from class, flop on the couch and toss their laptops on the floor.

That adolescent sense of invincibility sometimes extends to a carefree attitude about computing. The results can be downright ugly.

To drive home the importance of safeguarding their data to students -- many of whom will return to classes the next few weeks -- Margeson tells a tale of a woman who walked into the international company's Armonk, N.Y., office a few years ago with a broken floppy disc.

She'd sat on the disc. It contained her thesis, seven years in the making. After getting several extensions, she faced a deadline two days away. "Distraught" would not begin to describe her.

Margeson's employees recovered 11 of 12 documents on the disc. Unfortunately, the 12th file compiled the thesis's footnotes. More anguish.

"I couldn't believe how she had it all invested on a single floppy," he says. When he suggested she bring in her computer so they could try recovering the file that way, he learned that the student had been borrowing several friends' computers to write. The information was all over the place.