Question about pc hard drive/virus software

Hi all,
I have stored all my photos & also video footage on my pc & it just occured to me that they could all be lost if the pc gave up or even got a virus? i use broadband for home use only and have no virus software on it. Do you recommend having virus software on it first of all and secondly is there anything i should be doing to protect my photos and video footage? I guess I just want to be sure I won't loose it
Thanks

Store them on-line at the following

http://picasa.google.com/ for your photos

You could get an external hard drive and copy all the files you want to keep on this. They are becoming more affordable for the larger sizes now. You could also save the photos to cd or dvd`s. I would choose dvd as the media of choice as they hold more data. Use the ones you can write to only once as these are generaly considered to last better ie dvd +r or dvd-r, if you have a blue ray drive you can use blue ray dvd`s as these offer far larger capacities

You should certainly be running anti virus software on your computer you should also consider using a third party firewall or at least make sure windows built in fire wall is running. I use avg anti virus and comodo firewall and have had no infections you can download comodo from www.comodo.com and avg from www.avg.com there is free version of the above availble. One thing if you install comodo you may want to install only the firewall (there is a complete security suite available including antivirus) there is also the option not to install defense + you may want to do this as it creates a lot of popups (it can be confusing at times) but your defense level is reduced. there are other options such as zone alarm fire wall and othe free antivirus programs but be careful if you search the net for them as some are malicious programs pretending to be legitimate ones. hope this helps

PS make sure you disable windows fire wall if you install a third party one as they may conflict with each other