| Back Up Your Data
Just about everybody has important data on
their hard drive, from digital pictures to important documents, emails,
earmarked websites the list goes on and on. In my experience people are
pretty lax about backing up their PCs, and I think this really is an area
that deserves attention. With a good back up set you can bounce back from
a fatal hard drive crash and be up and running with all the your pictures,
documents, downloads, email and favorites before you know it. Having important
files stored on removable media is also a good safety precaution in case
you get a virus or trojan horse.
There are a couple of different ways to back
up important data, from the casual copy and paste to running complicated
scheduled backups. There is no wrong way, as long you have a copy of everything
you need.
You can save the data on a couple of different
types of media (floppy, ZIP, CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, Flash memory, even DAT
drives) but for home use I really recommend either CDs or DVDs, floppies
are just to small, Zips, although bigger than floppies are still small
(100-200MB), and they're old and kind of expensive. Flash memory can store
data, but it's not really something you want to save data to and store
away unless there is no other option. DAT tapes are more for the corporate
end of things and are overkill in most homes. CDs are cheap, hold a lot
of data, work on any PC and are easy to store.
If you use CD-RW, or DVD-RW you can actually
save money by setting up a "round robin" with your backups. To do this,
you need at least 3-4 of the same backup set, take the oldest and erase
it. Now use the blank disk for the new backup, the next time you do a backup
use the oldest disk in the set and so on and so forth.
As for the methods of backing up, I find it's
easiest when all my intended files and folders are organized in structured
manner and not scattered all over my hard drive. This is a good way to
insure that you don't forget anything important by hunting for a bunch
of individual files. An easy way to stay organized is to create a descriptively
labeled folder structure and try to be diligent about saving your data
to it's designed folder.
Another good practice is to test your backups.
Don't just take the burning software's word for it. After a backup, explore
the disk and randomly go through files and open them up to make sure that
they're complete and not corrupt. Learn from my experience; waiting for
a complete system failure is not a good time to check the validity of your
backups! This is a good way to get yourself in a lot of trouble— I know
if didn't back up the pictures or movies of our kids, I wouldn't be able
to live with myself.
Once you have all your ducks in a row, it's
time to back up. There are also a number of ways to do this. The easiest
is to open your burning program, select data CD, and go through the folder,
then explorer, and grab the folders you want to back up. When you select
a folder, you should see it in the "burn" selection window. When you're
done with your backup selection, choose "burn".
If you have Windows XP, you have the luxury
of being able to open up the blank CD or DVD in Windows Explorer and copying
and pasting the desired folders right onto the disk and select "Write files
to CD". Windows will do the rest for you. This is nice, but I personally
still like to use my third-party software.
Most burning software has its own backup service,
and there are a number of third-party backup titles out there. The nice
thing about these types of software is the options, like compression, backup
jobs, and incremental backups. These are nice features especially when
you have some backups that you want to insure are up to date. For instance,
you can create a "Back up Set" which is basically a saved and named list
of folders and files that you want backed up. This makes the whole process
so easy—you can create a backup set and once a week or so your can run
it and it will either create a new back up or save just the changes to
the backup. These are two options that are usually found in backup programs.
If you use "backup sets", it's important to keep the files organized, and
in all the correct folders. You can also schedule Backup Jobs, which are
basically backup sets that are scheduled to run at predetermined times,
and intervals (i.e. once a week Friday at 6:00).
As PCs become a bigger part of peoples' lives
the information being stored on the PCs is becoming more important. Performing
backups is essential for protecting your data. |