Have you every had a terminal computer failure that has resulted in a lot of lost data? there really is nothing worse. Just what can you do to minimise the risk of loosing your data. The best practice is to make backups, but what exactly does this mean, and how can you do it.
Making backups is a very important part of modern computing. Today many users store their photo collection, music and important files on their computers. The sad fact is computers can have problems, and with little or no notice they can fail resulting in lost files or data that you had stored.
Because of this backing up your files is very important. It is also critical to make sure your backup files are stored in a different drive or different device from your main files. If you simply make copies of your files and store them on your C: drive your backup files are not safe. Lets imagine you have a hard disk failure with your documents backed up on the same drive. You will not only loose your documents, you will also loose your backup.
Because of this is is very important to have your backups stored on a different location from your main files. One way of doing this is to go into your "My Documents" folder and create a folder called Backup. Within this folder copy and paste your the rest of the "My Documents" folder. Once you have done this you will have a folder within "My Documents" with the contents of "My Documents" placed within it. What you can then do is right click the folder you created, go to <Send to> then <Compressed (zipped) folder>. What this will do is create a Zip file containing the "Backup" folder.
By Zipping the folder what you are doing is compressing it. This means it will take up less disk space on your hard drive, or in this case another storage device. What you then need to do is get the Zip file to another device. This can be a CD/DVD Rom, memory card or any other media device you have access to.
The principle behind this technique is simple. Windows Will run as normal. You will periodically create a new Zip file and save it to your non C: drive location. Then if you have a serious error occur you may loose your Windows install, but at least your documents and files will be safe. What you would then do is repair the problem, reinstall windows, copy your zip file onto the computer, open it and move the files and folder into their correct locations. This is a very simple backup solution but in most cases it will be adequate.
Another method of achieving a similar result is to install a second hard disk into your PC. What you will then do is copy and paste your documents from C: drive onto your second hard disk. Windows XP makes it very simple to Install another disk. Once the Disk has been physically installed it will appear as a different drive letter from within "My Computer" (illustrated)
Using this method if you loose your main drive you will have a backup on your second drive. Then all you need to do is reinstall your first drive and/or Windows, and the operating system will then automatically detect the second drive. You will then be able to copy your files back over from the second drive to your main drive. This method is fairly effective although I still recommend having a remote copy of your documents, particularly your most important files. In theory it is possible that a power surge may cause you to loose both disks.
The back up solution I use is to have a second hard disk, and make a backup every 2 days. I then burn a weekly backup to DVD as a worst case scenario backup.
There are other sections of your computer that you may want to backup. For example any downloaded software that you have installed. You may wish to backup the setup files so that you don't have to download them again should you need to reinstall the software.
Another important area that you may wish to backup is your Cookies. The cookies are small files that store data that you use on the internet, for example remembering passwords and log in details for websites that you are required to sign into. Although this is not vital to backup this area it can be beneficial if you cant remember your login details.
There are quite a lot of companies that provide remove backup solutions. Remote backup companies allow you to store your data and information on their servers. This means that if you experience a system failure your information is safe on the third party companies server. You can then obtain the data from the company when you have restored your system. We can't provide any recommendations regarding these companies because we have never tried them. All we recommend you do is research the company before you sign up or agree to their services.
Developing your own backup procedure can save you a lot of hard work and heart ache if you loose your valuable data. A few minutes of time each week can save you countless hrs of lost work.
