If you’ve ever thought about setting up a network at home or even been so ambitious as to set up a small office network, you know that it isn’t simple or straight forward. Getting everything  running smoothly requires time, patience and several bottles of aspirin.

PC Magazine recently put together a how-to guide giving you some tips and tricks to make the process a little smoother. This guide explains the kind of storage to get and how to protect it.

You can set up your own local backup system given enough external storage space. If you’re going to take this course, we recommend creating not just a backup, but a whole drive image – —that is, a backup of not just your data, but your entire PC— – everything from your files to all the tweaks you make to your OS and apps so that they perform the way you want them to. The best software for this, hands down, is ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0.

Check out the entire article and pick up a few pointers. You may even have some of your own that the article doesn’t highlight. You can always share them here and give others the benefit of your wisdom and experience.