What To Backup And Why!!!
By Jeremy Robertson
Are you prepared for a catastrophic
loss of your data? Where you would you be if your hard drive failed?
Do you faithfully back up, or do you just believe it will never
happen to you? The truth is most people don’t know what to back up
or what media to use. With a good backup you will never sweat a
hardware failure. In this article I will tell you some of the
important items that the average user may want to save, this
includes but is not limited to Pictures, quicken data, emails,
address book, ect. I’m going to start with pictures. No one wants to
lose those precious pictures of the grandkids, graduations,
weddings, and all the other important one in a lifetime photos, you
can never replace. Pictures stored to the default location in
windows XP are stored in My Pictures under My documents. If you use
the Kodak easy share software then it stores its pictures in a
folder under the root directory called Kodak, in sub directories or
albums named usually by the date saved. To save these files to disk
you simple browse using My Computer right click on the directory and
choose send to D: CD drive where D: is the drive letter for your
CDRW.
|
Now we will move on to quicken. Quicken
will store it’s data in a .qdb file in a directory under the
root name quicken. I usually get this entire folder but you can
choose to only get the .qdb files to save space on your media.
If you use Quick Books they usually store there data in a folder
under program files> Intuit> Quick Books. You may have to browse
a bit to find your specific data depending on the program that
stores it. The best way is to pay attention when you save your
data the software will normally tell you where it is saving the
data. |
 |
|
To save your email simple open outlook express and choose File > Export > first choose Messages after you have successfully exported the messages then go back and choose address book. If for some reason the files fail to export there is another way, but it is a bit more complicated. Don’t be scared, I will walk you though this procedure. Ok first open My Computer and browse to the C drive. Now these files are hidden and we have to tell windows we want to see all hidden files and folders as well as the file extensions. To do this go to the menu bar and choose tools > folder options choose the view tab and click the radio button for show hidden files and folders, and uncheck hide file extensions and hide protected operating system files. Now Click apply and at the top choose apply to all folders, and when the dialog box appears, then choose yes. Now all the files and folders are showed in my computer. Next choose documents and settings and then the folder that shows the name of your user profile that you use. Then choose the file called Application data > Microsoft > address book. There will be a file called (user profile).wab save this file using the method mentioned above. Next go back to the C: drive > documents and settings > user profile. Choose local settings > application data > identities > there will be a folder named randomly like (C4555DDF-58D4-4A09-810D-C15541D445D3) > Microsoft > Outlook Express. Inside this folder there are several .dbx files save them all. |
|
|
If you have important documents in the my documents folder you will want to save them to. Theses steps will save shortcuts to your documents ready to be burned. Open the CDRW drive and choose write these files to disk. This will start the burn process. This is great for a one-time backup but it would be pretty tedious to do it on a regular basis. There is software that will back up all selected files and folders, like Handy Backup, Easy Backup, ect. These programs will backup your important data on a set schedule and to all kinds of media. |
|
|
If your backup is done properly, your data can be placed back on your hard drive should it ever fail. I hope this document helps you to safe guard your data and protect you in the event that your hard drive should fail.
|
|
|
Jeremy M. Robertson Senior Technician The Computer Generation Inc. |
|