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The Importance of Keeping a Backup

If you have ever wondered about the importance of keeping a backup, imagine how you would feel if a virus destroyed the contents of your hard drive? Or a problem could only be solved by using a system recovery CD, wiping out all your data in the process? Or you run FDISK and accidentally remove a partition on the wrong drive? Or your hard drive dies, taking your data with it? Mistakes will always happen and all disc drives eventually expire. Without a backup it is a disaster, with a backup it is reduced to a very large nuisance.

Files That You Need to Backup

A private user only needs to back up files that they have created or modified themselves. Computers use both program and data files; programs can be reloaded from the original discs, but your data can only be reloaded from backup copies.

Making a backup is simpler if you store all your files in one place. Letting each program use its own default storage file results in you data being scattered all over your hard drive. If you are using Windows 98 or Me put everything into My Documents, in Windows 2000 and XP use Documents and Settings.

What is Needed to Make a Backup

There a choice of methods you can employ to make backup copies of your files. You can simply drag and drop the files you've created to a CD, copy them using the XCOPY command, use a third party CD mastering program to copy your files, or you can use Windows or a third party backup programs to create a backup to CD.

If you have software such as DirectCD drag-and-drop is extremely easy and you can use a CD-RW, but it is labor intensive if you have a lot of files, hard to keep organized, and you will need compatable software to read the disc.

Using the XCOPY command allows you to copy files from a specified folder made after a specified date, eg 'XCOPY "\Documents and Settings"\*.* /s/d:03-15-02 K:\' copies everything from Documents and Settings created after 03-15-04 to the specified drive.

A CD mastering program, such as Nero, allows you backup your files to a CD-R. While this takes more steps than drag-and-drop, the resulting disc can be read by almost any CD-ROM, CD-R, or CD-RW drive without installing a compatible UDF reader program first.

The disadvantage with these methods is that they are unable to create a backup larger than the media it is stored on. If this is a problem, you will need a true backup program capable of 'media spanning'.

Backup programs differ from ordinary file saving by compressing files, storing many files in a single file proprietary to the backup program, and using the 'Archive' file attribute should you ask for a backup of changed or new files only. They often allow Backups to be stored as files for transfer to CD later, and a disk image to be made for disaster recovery.