Rescue Me - Backup

A Backup Article Contributed by Samwell

Backup Basics

One of the most important basic computer chores you can do is a proper, regular, backup. There are several reasons for doing regular backups.

One of the main reasons is that if you have sensitive data on your computer, if you don't have a regular backup schedule, you may lose everything, which could cost you a lot of money and hard work. It is not hard to do a good thorough backup, so there is really no excuse for not having one setup on your computer, and doing it regularly.

There are different issues in play today than there were when I first started in computing. One is the much larger hard drive size, as well as the larger amounts of important files, that even regular users have that are important to them. Because of this, the old style of backup using a floppy disk is not really practical.

Another change is that newer computers often don't come with a floppy drive, but do come with Rewritable CDRom drives. This makes it much easier to do a large backup e.g. 700 Mb. You can also get a Rewritable DVD drive which allows for an even larger backup.

The final change is that new computers are bootable from the CDRom so you don't have to create a rescue floppy disk unless you own an older computer. What this means is that you just have to insert your operating system disk, in the case of a catastrophic computer failure, to reinstall your operating system.

Setting up Your Backup

To set up a backup, is really not too complicated, given the importance, OR maybe that is why computer operating system software manufacturers make it easy to do. One of my first jobs in computing was as a combination bookkeeper/network technician at a smaller company. One of the first things I did was to institute a backup schedule where all of the accounting and inventory information was backed up at the end of each working day.

Once we had our backup Zip disk created, I took it home with me so that the data wan't in the same place as the computers in case a fire or destroyed the computers. This way we would have the last backup from the previous day so that if something happened even the next day, we would only lose about four to eight hours hours of work. This backup took about an hour to set up initially and could be completed in ten minutes on subsequent occasions.

I will go through the procedure for setting up a backup in Windows 98, Windows XP has setup a system restore option so that you can return to the last good configuration. In Windows 98 first go click on the Start button and go to Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Backup. The backup dialog box will open and at this point, you can choose the files and or folders you wish to include in the backup.

You can also choose a location to backup your files, such as a Zip or Jaz disk, or a re writeable CDRom drive. At this point your back up is ready to run, all you have to do is go to Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Backup again and choose the backup you have saved to run it. Simple right? That is why I can't understand why everyone doesn't have a backup set up.

Backup Conclusions

Now even though you don't have to use backup for Windows XP, it is a good idea to back up your important files to a disk. You can do this by using Copy/Paste to move them to a Zip or Jaz disk. Or else use the CD burning software(if you have a CD burner) to create a data disk and save it to run every day In this way you should never lose important data.

In conclusion, I can't stress enough the importance of doing regular data backups, even though it may not be valuable, you will still have to do a lot of work to replace it. So don't forget about it, go set up your backup right now!