Planning Your Computer Backup

There are many ways you can lose information on a computer: unintentional keyboard stroke, a power surge, lightning, floods, and sometimes equipment just fails.

If you regularly make backup copies of your files and keep them in a separate place, you can get some, if not all, of your information back in the event something happens to the originals on your computer.   Once data is lost, it is difficult and expensive to recover.

Consider the value of the data stored on your PC. A week's worth of changes and additions to files or to a database can have greater value than the entire system on which it is stored.

Having a good backup provides you with an important safety net. To backup your files simply means copying files to a second medium as a precaution in case the first medium fails.

 
 

File Suggestions On What To Backup
  • Documents and Personal Projects
  • Program Data that is not stored in your documents folder
  • Email Address Book
  • Internet Explorer/Browser Favorites
  • Digital photographs
  • Calendar
  • Financial Records

 

Where To Backup

There are more and more choices every year when it comes to backup media. A few examples  are USB flash drives, external hard drives, writeable CD and DVD, and zip drives.

If you are on a network you may have a backup folder on a server. Follow your network administrators instructions for backing up files if they are different from the instructions below.

You can also use the backup utilities included with the operating system, purchase third-party backup programs, or web space to store your backup.

 

How to Manually Backup Files: Copy & Paste to External Media
  • Insert, plug in, or connect to the external media you will use for the backup
  • Select and right click the documents you would like to backup or save.
  • Select copy.

  • Go to My Computer 

  • Find the device that you would like to save it to (i.e. floppy disk, hard disk, zip disk, CD, or network drive).

  • Once you have found the device right click it and select paste.

  • Give your computer time to download or copy the information you are backing up and remove the device.

  • Test your backups. Make sure that the drive or disk actually contains the files you think they do.

  • Test your backup by trying to restore a file or two.

  • Keep your backups in a safe place. If you consider your data extremely important, you should keep a copy offsite, in a safe deposit box, or another location protected from theft or fire.