Nobody likes backing up, but one day it'll save your bacon. Here are the seven most efficient methods of protecting your data, no matter what your situation.
While there's no doubt that computers and digital files are very handy, they're certainly not infallible. What happens if you're hard drive crashes, or thieves steal your laptop.
You may even realise on Friday that you desperately need the now-departed Wednesday version of an important document that you significantly altered on Thursday.
At times like these, having a secure, up-to-date backup of your hard drive can be a lifesaver. Here are seven practical strategies, including using USB storage, backing up via the internet or through your local network, backing up Windows itself, and preserving huge media files like songs and videos.
What to back up
Your hard drive may contain hundreds of thousands of files. Many of them should be backed up every day, others only occasionally, and still others - including temp files, the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys), and your browser cache - not at all. Let's look at the different kinds of files individually.
Your documents
You should back up your word processing files, spreadsheets, and similar documents every day. Any basic backup program can perform incremental backups, in which the program copies only the files that have changed since the most recent previous backup. (Good backup programs also perform versioning; that is, they keep several iterations of the same file on hand and enable you to choose which version to restore.)
Your recent documents
If your backup program can handle incremental backups, you don't have to worry about recent documents as separate entities. But if you often work on these files on other people's computers, you may want to carry a copy of them on a flash drive or store a copy of them online.
Application data
Apps create and maintain data files such as email messages, browser favourites, calendar entries, and contacts that require daily backing up. Most programs store them in a hidden folder inside your user folder (in XP, C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Application Data; in Vista, C:\Users\your name\AppData).
Also, in XP, Microsoft stores Outlook and Outlook Express data in C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Local Settings\Application Data). Fortunately, any well-designed backup program intended for everyday, no-nexpert users (as opposed to IT departments) knows where to look for Outlook data.
Media
If your backup medium is sufficiently roomy and fast, you can back up your photo, music, and video files every day. But these large files may require a separate backup strategy.
Heirlooms: Files that you want to keep forever - family photos, the special anniversary card you made for your parents, and so on - need backing up and extra protection.
Your system
You can always reinstall Windows and your apps, if you have the original discs or can download the programs. But if Windows becomes unusable or your hard drive crashes, switching to a system backup (also called a disaster recovery backup) that you create a couple of times a year can get your machine up and running smoothly without much effort.
You can separate and store various types of data on different hard drives. But Windows doesn't make the procedure easy, and the strategies I discuss don't require this separation.
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Comments
Bill said: agree with the comments so farI have taken a different approach under Win XP by separating my data from the system by using a second hard drive both my documents and outlook express make it simple to change the location of the store folders away from the C drive I use the Echo function in MS Synctoy to backup the contents of my data drive to a USB hard drive together with Ghost for the occasional image When things do go wrong with the system Im happy to reload XP from scratch it takes time but gets rid of the crud and the data photos and music etc are safe I wonder if this will continue to work for me with Windows 7
Luke Addison said: I had been using a Windows Home Server but had problems with it failing every now and thenIve now started running a Linux Fedora based solution at home called Amahi Its very simple very stable and runs well on an old PC I had doing nothing All my networked computers 3 attached to it are backed up dailyYou can read about it at my blog if youd like not sure if links work on here though at wwwlukeaddisoncom
Cyteck said: No where in this article has the author mentioned Disk Mirroring ie RAID 1 mode Disk mirroring ca be done in real time or synchronization can be scheduled for a specific time each day Disk Mirroring can be a really valuable option even for home used as the cost of hard disk drives has fallen so much in recent years whilst storage capacity has jumpedI have amp use a program called Mirror Folder made by Techsoftpl which provided RAID1 mode amp real time using a pair of disk drivesSEE wwwtechsoftplcom I highly recommend Mirror Folder to anyone who wants the benefits of continuous data back ups on the fly in real time Restoration of a broken mirror is pretty quick amp straight forwards too
Peter said: Nice article would also recommend that for online backup people take a look at Syncplicity which Ive used for the last 8 months or so to back up frequently changing files the free version giving 2GB of backup space Also Recently moved over to Macrium Reflect - the free version - having used Drive Image 7 for yrs Reflect is very easy to use makes fast backups and having used it recently to recover my PC system I can vouch for its effectiveness when it counts