Securing your important computer files
Recently I was rearranging my home office (I seem to do this a lot) when I received a call from a lady with questions about the recovery of accidentally deleted photos on her PC.
What was interesting about this phone call was that it was the third one this week in regards to recovering lost files. So let’s cover doing backups on your PC; something you should regularly do to protect your important files.
For the vast majority of PC users out there, we keep all our personal files in the ubiquitous ‘My Documents’ folder. This is a good thing. It is, perhaps, the best location to keep all of your letters, photos, music, videos, and other documents because it makes backing them up easy.
Don’t get in the habit of just dropping files and folders onto your desktop. Place them into ‘My Documents.’
On Windows XP you have a nice backup utility at ‘Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup’ – or at least you should have if you have a complete XP install. If you cannot find it then try ‘Start->Run’ and type in ‘ntbackup.exe’ in the open box. This starts the backup wizard, which will walk you through doing a backup.
You can accept the default settings if all of the files you want to backup are in your ‘My Documents’ folder – until you get to the part that asks where to backup your files.
Up to then it’s been easy. What gets most people stumped is what to backup (your files) to!
No one uses those little plastic floppies any more (not enough room). So how do you find out how big your backup is going to be? Fortunately that is also easy.
If you have a ‘My Documents’ folder on your PC desktop (all those things, called icons, on your PC display), right click on it and select ‘Properties.’ Click on the ‘General’ tab on the Properties window. You will see the size of the folder and everything in it. I know it shows two sizes, but for backups we are concerned with the size and not the size on disk. You can do the same thing if your ‘My Documents’ folder is in the ‘Start’ list.
Back to what/where to backup to. One of the easiest, low cost, devices to backup to is a USB Flash Drive. You can find these at Wal-Mart, Staples, Best Buy, etc. Prices can range from $15 to $50 in price, and from 4GB to 64GB in size. These plug into the USB ports on the front or back of your PC.
What are sizes on a PC anyway?
Here is some simple math (not for you techies) about sizes. Think of each character in this article as a byte in size. Don’t worry about what a byte is right now (it’s how your PC knows the size of things). OK? Let’s start – 1,000 bytes equals 1kB, or one kilobyte. 1,000kB equals 1MB, or one megabyte (1,000MB equals 1GB, or gigabyte, 1,000GB equals 1TB, or one terabyte). Get ready because the terabyte is already here.
So, for a simple backup medium I’d use the USB Flash Drive. Buy one that will hold all of your personal files. More than likely, most of you have less than 4GB of files. If you have more that (around 32GB), you may want to look at a more sophisticated means of doing backups.
If you have a CD or DVD burner drive on your PC, you can also use these for backups. This gets more complicated because of all the different software out there to write data to CD/DVD (much more complicated than I can get to in this article). On my Windows Vista and Windows 7 computers, Microsoft has made this easy by detecting that I want to write to a CD/DVD when I put in a blank disc.
If you have additional questions, are looking for answers or possible options, send me an e-mail at ibannon@imttec.com. I’ll try to answer them for you.
Ivan Bannon has been working with computer hardware and software since 1982, from mainframes to microcontrollers. He is currently the vice-president of IMT Technologies, Inc. in Traverse City. Over the years, Bannon has been an IT Manager, software development manager, software developer, and small business owner.
Source:http://www.morningstarpublishing.com/articles/2010/08/30/grand_traverse_insider/opinion/doc4c7c0f4c10894387723160.txt
