Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prepare For The Theft Of Your PC?

A security-conscious Slashdot reader has theft insurance -- but worries whether it covers PC theft. And besides the hassles of recreating every customization after restoring from backups, there's also the issue of keeping personal data private. I currently keep important information on a hidden, encrypted partition so an ordinary thief won't get much off of it, but that is about the extent of my preparation... What would you do? Some sort of beacon to let you know where your stuff is? Remote wipe? Online backup?
There's a couple of issues here -- including privacy, data recovery, deterrence, compensation -- each leading to different ways to answer the question: what can you actually do to prepare for the possibility? So use the comments to share your own experiences. How have you prepared for the theft of your PC?

Comments

Nothing you can do except encrypt and insure

[cerberusss]

So I was at the receiving end of a burglary last year. The wife woke me up because she heard something. And in some sort of half-sleep/half-awake state, I stormed down and charged at the two guys that were riffling through our possessions.

Thank god I live in Europe so burglars aren't armed or anything. They ran away to the front door and tried to escape. I ran after them and when they were opening the front door, attacked them. At some point during the pushing and shoving, I woke up and thought -- what the fuck do I actually care?

So I said "okay guys, let's stop here. I haven't actually seen your faces and I'm not looking" (I started staring at the floor) "and I don't really care, just take that stuff and go". They took off and I called the cops. They took fingerprints and stuff but never caught them.

They took an iPad, a MacBook and some money. I remote-locked the iPad, and realized I had Prey running on the MacBook. I switched the MacBook to "lost mode" but one year later, it appears they formatted the drive before connecting to the internet. The files on the MacBook weren't encrypted, the iPad was.

Lessons learned:
- I got most of the value back through the insurance
- Install Prey or some other remote locking software stuff
- Don't go and fight burglars, it's not worth it