Most computer users will experience data
loss at some point, and a number of things can cause data loss. A virus, physical hard drive damage, magnetism and other unforeseen
situations can all cause permanent data loss. To make this unfortunate event as painless as possible, it is vital to have
backup copies of your data. You can use a backup hard drive, Zip drive, tape drive or a CD or DVD burner for data
backup (DO NOT USE FLOPPY DISKS for long term storage! They are too volatile). A backup hard drive
can be internal (an additional hard disk installed in your pc) or external (USB/Firewire type). It's the easiest, quickest
and least volatile method for data backup provided you have good and updated anti-virus software, firewall protection
AND an electronic surge protector.
If you have a laptop, usually you cannot
add an additional internal hard drive for data backup, although some laptops have this feature. If you do not have a CD or
DVD burner on your laptop, you can backup data to an EXTERNAL Firewire or USB hard drive or an EXTERNAL Firewire or USB DVD/CD burner
OR you can copy data to another computer via an Ethernet network crossover cable, USB data transfer cable or laplink
cable (serial, parallel or USB).
Using DVD-R, DVD-RW or CD-R, CD-RW disks
(RW = reuseable read-write type) with disk burners are also a good way to back up data. There are dual format
or "combo" burners (DVD-RW/CD-RW) now so you only need a single burner to burn both
DVD and CD disks. CD's will hold about 650-700 MB of data, whereas DVD's will hold 4.7 GB of data. The new Double
Layer DVDs (DVD+R DL, also
known as DVD+R9) can now hold over 9 Gigabytes of data.
It's a good idea to try to keep all of your data
in one designated folder for backing up, then copy the entire folder (see “My Documents" folder in
example below) to your backup hard drive, tape, or DVD or CD disk. Don’t forget to copy over your internet bookmarks,your
email file(s) and any other important data (TAX and financial data, photos...etc) to the directory that
you are going to backup. If you have any other files not normally saved in the one designated folder for backing
up (like your Internet favorites or email files) you need to make a note of where those files are and copy them over to the
one designated folder at regular intervals for backing up as needed.
Your Internet Explorer bookmarks are stored in a directory called Favorites. If you
use Windows 9x or Millennium, the Favorites folder is located under your C:\Windows\Favorites directory. If you have a personal Windows profile set up you can
find the Favorites directory under C:\Windows\Profiles\yourprofilehere directory.
If you use Windows NT,
the Favorites folder is located under your C:\WINNT\Profiles\yourprofilehere directory.
If you have separate profiles set up on
your pc with Windows 2000 or XP they are
located in your local account directory under C:\Documents and Settings\yourprofilehere directory
(if you don’t know what your local account is, it is the account in which you log into Windows with. If you log into Windows as JDoe look for the JDoe directory under C:\Documents and
Settings).
Internet Explorer and newer versions of
Netscape offer an Export feature
that easily allows favorites to be exported to this format (Internet Explorer example below). Netscape Communicator
stores bookmarks in a file called bookmark.htm.
The method of backing up your E-Mail
and address book depends on which E-Mail program you are using. These vary with the different versions of Outlook or Outlook
Express. With Outlook, you can archive your files,
export your files or just copy your entire “outlook.pst” file to a backup source. With Outlook Express,
you would export and backup your address book and your OE "Identities" directory.
