SUper afraid to install updates

[Roby718]

ive used ubuntu before, and i recently installed it on my 'work' laptop and am dead scared of installing updates for fear that Ill screw it up, I have all my DJ music and work on it, and the last time I installed something having to do with the system, It was a GFX driver for my card, it screwed it up. alot. I had to re-install. Put short im scared that if I install these 300.0 or megs of updates ill mess something up and lose all my work (this desnt include distro upgrad from 9.09 to 9.10 I believe, wierd, i checked, upgrade option disappeared. Alot of these updates look system critical, so i have no idea now what will happen if i intall it. So tell me what the helll to do, and there are things like FS Abstraction for game programmers. And all kinds of crap. I HAVE A DJ gig coming up soon, so i cant loose theese things to an update that destroys my system completely. AS YOU CAN TELL IM FRANTIC.. . OH THERE COMMING TO TAKE ME AWWWWWWAAAAAYYYYY......:confused::confused::confus ed::confused::confused::confused::mad::-(

[viper250]

first thing I tell everyone is to get into the habit of backing up your files
I cannot express enough how important it is.
I do not install updates without backing up current files first.
I have been in computer repair for over 30 years and its the hardest thing to get people to do is backing up data.
your files are important to you so dont take chances on losing them.
blank cds are cheap and an external hard drive makes a great first point backup device. (you can periodically organize you files and then copy them to cd for your archive).

when you update your system if the update doesn't take you can re-install your os and still have a copy of your files to restore with (meaning your work isn't lost)

[stlsaint]

+1 on viper250s' comment. There is not sure way to ensure that you will not come across issues when dealing with any OS. So backups are very important if you are on a work/production system. Backup your system then run the updates and continue to backup your system even after the updates because a simple reboot can cause problems to a system if not carefully maintained.