How to backup your data

This document is based on backup in Windows XP, Vista or 98. The main principles will still apply to Macs and Linux, however your data will be in a different location to what is suggested here.

Most people with computers would be aware that you need to backup. Only trouble is most people are not sure what and how and how often they should be backing up.

So how often should you backup.

My golden rule is, if you have done enough work or taken enough photos or downloaded enough music that you would not want to have to redo the work, then it is time to backup.

So if you take photos everyday or work on documents everyday, then you should be backing up at the end of every day.

So what do you need to backup.

Basically you only really need to backup your work, your photos, music. You do not need to backup windows or your programs as you will have the windows disk and software disks with your programs.

In later posts I will provide instructions on how to backup emails and address books for Outlook and Thunderbird as well as your favourites.

So what method should I use to backup.

There are a couple of methods that I would recommend for the average PC user.

1. Rewritable DVDs (DVD RW) or Rewritable CDs (CD RW) or though the CDs are starting to get out of date they are still useful if you are only backing up less than 700 MB per Disk.

The advantages of backing up to media such as DVDs are:

The disks are relatively inexpensive.

You can make multiple copies and put some copies away or take to a friends house in case of fire or theft.

2. Portable hard disk drive or Flash Drives.

Portable hard drives are more expensive than Disks, however you can store much more data without the need to use multiple disks as you would have to with DVDs if you had a large amount of data.

So how do I backup.

First thing you need to do is determine what you need to backup and how many megabytes your data is.

So how much data can I store

CD-Rs hold 700 MB of data

DVDR or DVDRW hold 4.37GB (4700MB) note the slight difference here, please only try to put a maximum of 4.37GB onto a DVD.

Portable hard drives or flash drives: It will depend on how big the drives are and how much space you are already taking up on the drive.

Finding your data and its size.

Your My Documents

This includes Documents, Music and Pictures. (unless you have stored Music or Pictures outside the default location)

So your main location for data is your My Documents folder. For windows xp users this folder can be found by opening windows explorer (start, all programs, accessories, windows explorer).

Once you have windows explorer open you will see a folder in the left hand window called My Documents. You need right click on this folder and choose properties and then the general tab and see how many MB it says for size.

For Windows Vista users you will need to open windows explorer and in the left hand column you will see a Vista OS(C:), if you expand this you will see a folder called users, expand this folder and find your logon name, right click on this name and select properties and confirm the size in MBs or GBs.

So the main thing here is make sure that the available space on your backup media is more than the amount of data you intend to backup.

Backup procedure to portable hard drives or flash drives

So first we need to plug in the portable hard drive or flash drive to an available USB slot in your computer.

Next we need to create a backup folder on the portable drive. Open Windows explorer and in the left hand window navigate and find the removable drive, it will most likely be listed as one of the drives below your cd or dvd drive.

Highlight the drive in the left hand window of explorer and then select the menu options file / new / folder. Now you can type the name backup or whatever you want to call the folder.

Now all you need to do is navigate back to your My Documents folder (XP) or your Folder with your user name (Vista) as decsribed above.

Right click on top of your folder and select copy. Then navigate to the backup folder you created on the portable drive and right click on top of this folder and select paste.

A copy of your data will now be sent to your removal drive.

When you go to perform the copy and paste the next time, you will be asked to overwrite your existing files. At this point you can select yes to all and your data will be updated with the new files.

Backup procedure to CDRW or DVDRW

Before backing up your data to a rewritable DVD or CD the disk will need to be formatted (or prepared) using your burning program.

With Nero you will need to select prepare rewritable disk. Depending on which other program you have for burning you will need to choose to prepare rewritable disk. Once this is done your disk becomes equivalent to another drive.

You can copy files to the DVDRW or CDRW as is described above for the backup to portable hard drive.

So thats it for backing up your My Documents, Photos Music etc, next few posts will describe backing up emails to Outlook and Thunderbird as well as backing up your favourites.