We all know that we should back up our system as soon as possible.
But if you're like most of us, you will get to it tomorrow.
The problem is that tomorrow rarely ever comes until you experience
a serious computer failure and then it’s too late.
Taking the time to backup your data or entire hard drive is
not as painstaking as it may seem. And the rewards of doing
so will be great should your system experience a crash.
WINDOWS AND OTHER BACKUP SOFTWARE
If you have Windows XP you will need to install the new Windows
backup utility from the Windows XP cdrom. Just place the WinXP
cdrom in your cdrom drive and locate the line D:\VALEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP.
Here you see the first letter as D but if your optical drive
has a different drive letter, exchange the D with your drive's
letter. To install the utility, click on the file named NTBackup.msi.
The backup utility will be installed to the system tools group.
Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and
Backup. There is a neat wizard that will walk you through
the backup process.
WinXP's backup utility will backup your entire hard drive
and will make a recovery disk to boot.
One neat third party backup software you can try is NewTech
InfoSystems at http://www.ntius.com
where you can download their trial version and put it to use
for 30 days. And if it’s your cup of tea, the full version
will run you about $79.95
INCREMENTAL OR DIFFERENTIAL BACKUPS
You should back up your entire hard drive when you perform
your first backup. After that it is best to perform an Incremental
backup. This type of backup only allows you to backup files
that have changed since your last performed backup.
Differential Backups copy changed files that have been added
since you last did your entire backup. This type of backup
is more detailed than incremental backups and is easier to
restore.
BACKUP STORAGE DEVICES
You can backup your files on cdroms and have the files compressed
to save both space and backup time. WinXP will compress folders,
subfolders, and files during backup.
You can purchase compression software that will do the same,
saving you cdrom storage space. The compressed files are automatically
uncompressed once they are restored onto your hard drive.
You can also use a second hard drive as your backup storage
device. We use two backup hard drives to be certain Ultimate
PC Repair is up and running 24/7.
You can either purchase an internal hard drive and install
it to your ide cable, or you may want to purchase an external
hard drive that connects to your Universal Serial Bus or USB
Port.
The advantage of the external drives is that they have very
large amounts of storage space, transfer data fast, and can
be moved from your computer to any other computer.
We use the Western Digital 170 Gigabyte External Hard Drive
and we simply bounce it around to either one of our four computers
with the greatest of ease.
USING ONLINE BACKUP SERVICES
You may also consider online services for backing up your
data. If you lose all your backup data, say due to a natural
disaster such as a flood, your online data is right there
waiting for you.
Another advantage of online backups is that you can access,
upload, or download your data from any location. It is best
to use high speed internet access if you're considering online
data storage.
One such online backup service is Istorage located at http://www.iomega.com/istorage
and charges from $2.49 a month for 50MBs to $17.95 a month
for a big 1,000MBs of storage.
Backup your system now in one way or another if you have not
done so. If you have critical data that you simply cannot
do without, take the time to invest in a backup device or
one of the many online backup services.
Stop and perform those backups as soon as possible. You will
be thankful you did should something go wrong with your computer.
It’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Otis F. Cooper is the author of the award winning PC Super
Pack, the Computer Training By Video course. For hundreds more free
PC repair tips, sign up for his bi-monthly newsletter and learn
the PC free at http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com.
