By Kim Komando
Gannett News Service

Q. My client's files are about 3 gigabytes in size. Should I back them up to recordable CDs or recordable DVDs? I can create both with my computer.

A. DVDs store 4.7GB of data; CDs hold about 700 megabytes. You'll be able to store all of your client's files on one DVD, instead of five CDs, so using DVDs is probably more convenient. One caveat: Backing up files to DVD takes time. If you'll be doing this regularly, consider adding a second hard drive to your system. A high-capacity 250GB drive costs around $200. It can back up 3GB of files in just a couple of minutes, whereas burning a DVD might take as long as an hour.

Q. Someone is using my e-mail address. I am receiving bounced e-mail messages. I changed my password. Am I OK now?

A. Changing your password is a good idea, but that may not stop the returned e-mail. Someone you correspond with might have contracted an e-mail virus that harvests addresses from an address book or entire hard drive. Then, it sends a copy of itself to all the addresses found and uses one (yours in this case) as the return address. There is another possibility. Thousands of computers are serving spam without the owners' knowledge. Run an anti-virus program to make sure your computer is not compromised.