Finding your personal files
Your personal files include word/excel/power point documents, digital pictures, videos etc. They are probably the most important thing you need to backup. If you don’t backup anything else at the very least backup your personal files.
Your personal files on Windows, reside by default under "My Documents" folder.
But many times your personal files get dispersed in different locations.
You should search your computer for all your personal files and write down their locations.
Note that it is a good idea to organize your files in such a way that it is easy to locate them for backup purposes and regular usage.
Finding and saving general software and settings files
We all use many types of software during our day to day computer usage: an Internet browser, word processor, digital camera/video software etc.
Most software’s save our setting and preferences in special files and/or the registry.
For example an internet web browser saves your favorite websites list so you could always find the sites you need easily.
Most software’s offer a way to backup or export your settings to a file.
Consult your specific software help files for the specifics of exporting/backing up their data. Once you have done that save that data to your hard disk and write down the location. One more thing to remember is that you should always keep a copy of the software installation files of any software you install on your computer because in the case of total failure you will need to reinstall the software.
Backing up your software settings and personal files
Now that you know the locations of all your software settings and personal files we can proceed to backing them up.
The actual backup can be done using various methods:
- You can just burn the files/folders to a CD/DVD using your favorite burning software or copy them to an external drive or even a disk on key if you have one.
But what ever you do, do not be tempted to only save your files on another location on the same hard drive this is a recipe for disaster if your hard disk ever dyes on you.
- Use Windows Backup utility
- Use third party backup utility
I recommend that you use methods 2 or 3 mainly because you minimize the chances of common backup mistakes (like not copying all the required files) and the important ability to schedule backup
The scheduling feature lets you create an automated task that would backup your data at regular intervals.
Backing up operating system files
This is trickier and unless you are very computer savvy or just bored, should be left to specialized backup software.
The reason for backing up your operating system is to avoid having to reinstall Windows in the event of minor failures(such as limited file damage to the registry and other important system files) and saving a lot of time in the event of a catastrophic failure(such as when you need to replace your hard disk and reinstall Windows) .
Backing up the important operating system files can be done easily by:
- Use Windows Backup utility
- Use third party backup utility
How often should I backup?
Ideally you would be using specialized backup software to automate your backups at regular intervals. In this case you could schedule the software to run daily at times when no one normally uses the computer. Once in a while, if you are having a very productive day and make many changes to your files you can even do intra day backups. As a rule of thumb I would say: backup as often as you can as long as you don’t feel you have become a slave to your own backups.
What if I already had a disaster can anything be done to help me?
Windows XP users can try to use the System Restore tool.
You can also try to use one of the many disk rescue utilities.
If every thing else fails, bite the bullet and vow to never ever forget to backup your files again…
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