The purpose of any backup is to make sure you don’t lose your precious data, right? Well this would be nice, but really it is so you don’t get into serious trouble when your computer crashes and you lose the data that is highly valued by your spouse.
First a little story. A friend had purchased a huge external drive and proceeded to make a copy of all his photos and music. When he was done “backing up”, he deleted all the originals. “I have a backup on my new drive”, he informed me. Actually mate you don’t have a backup at all. You have one copy of your precious photo and music collection.
You see a backup is when you have one, two or more copies of each photo or whatever. You need to bear this in mind when you decide how you will back up your files. A copy on a USB hard drive plus one on CD or DVD is a minimum backup, provided you still retain a copy on your computer hard drive.
Now, how to back up? You can either use any decent backup program or manually backup the important files by copying the relevant folders. Its really easy and if you don’t know this basic stuf I suggest you make the effort to find out how. If you find all that too hard you should part with a few dollars and pay for this to be setup for you.
Here are the common areas you should include in your backup. This shouls be done separately for each user so that nothing is missed. You must log in separately otherwise some files will be locked and not successfully backed up.
This method makes use of the simple Windows file manager. If you dont know how to copy files, you need to learn how.
Open the Windows file manager by Double clicking on any “My Computer” icon.
Open the C: drive
Open Documents and Settings folder
Open the appropriate user folder (check who is logged on)
This now is the starting point of all further axtions.
C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name
As you just did, open your backup drive.
Make a folder for you backup and open it.
Position this window and the other window so both can be seen at once.
You will be dragging folder using the drag and drop action. The following are usual locations for your files. Go to each folder mentioned and drag to your backup drive to make a copy.
My Documents This folder should contain most of you files. Generally picture and music are in this folder. C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\My Documents
Desktop Some user store files on the desktop. this is not recommended, but if this area is used for storing files it will need to be backed up. C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\Desktop
Windows Address Book You email addresses if you use Outlook Express.
C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book
Outlook Express data files
C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{AC31B83B-08E5-4D1F-892F-9E42C617C37E}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
Favourites
C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\Favourites
If you use Thunderbird for you email, backup this folder.
C:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles
If you use Outlook for your email, you can use the backup in the program.
There are many other programs such as accounting software that should be backed up from the program. If you need help with this you should read the manual or call the product support.