BACKUP

Do you know where your DATA files are?  No?  What will you do when your hard drive crashes?  It will you know.  It is not at question of "IF"... it is a matter of "WHEN"?  How will you recover your precious documents, spreadsheets, databases, financial data?   

There are a number of BACKUP options, after market and built into your Operating System.   A rule of thumb is to not backup what you can restore.  For example, your DATA cannot be restored but an Application can be.  You do not need to backup all of say Microsoft Office because it can be re-installed via the disks.  However, the DATA generated from the Office suite cannot be re-installed and thus needs to be backed up.  A good idea is to always keep your DATA files in a central location.  Microsoft Office for example by default keeps all of it's document files in the folder MY DOCUMENTS.  This is great as they did the work for you.  If you have allowed all of your documents to be saved to the default MY DOCUMENTS folder than it is very easy when you perform a backup to be confident that your documents will be backed up when you backup that folder.  You can also save other data files to the MY DOCUMENTS folder as most applications allow you to configure a backup folder.  The application will not only save it's specific data to it's specific folder but also prompt you to make a backup to another location which can be the MY DOCUMENTS folder.  Some applications that do this for example are Microsoft Money or Intuit's Quicken.  Obviously the financial data produced by each of these applications would be considered important DATA.

The first step to successfully backing up your precious DATA as mentioned above is to determine a central place that your data is kept.  It is important to know where your DATA files are located on your computer.  Whether you keep your personal important DATA in the MY DOCUMENTS folder or another central folder the next step in successfully backing up is to have a copy of your DATA on some other media besides your local hard drive.  To decide what external media is best suited for your needs depends on how much data you are backing up.

• The small USB Flash drives come in many sizes these days.  You can purchase 16GB (gigabyte) USB Flash drive for under $40 and smaller sizes for much less.  One of these should be more than sufficient to hold your data files.  In fact, with these SUB Flash drives being so inexpensive these days you could have 2 and keep one in an offsite safe place.
• External Hard Drives are also extremely inexpensive today.  You can purchase a 500GB external hard drive for under $100.  Even 1TB (terabyte) drives can be purchased for around $150!  External hard drives are a great way to store backed up data however, typically external hard drives are connected to your computer and if there is some catastrophic event such as a fire that destroys your computer odds are good that your external drive attached to it will be destroyed as well.
• CDs / DVDs are also a good media for backing up your data depending on the total size of your backup.  CDs can hold up to 750MB (megabyte) while DVDs can hold either 4.6GB or slightly over 9GB for a dual layer.  CDs and DVDs are very inexpensive, easy to store and if you purchase the Re-Writeable format you can use them over again.
• There are numerous new websites today that offer the ability to store your data online.  Simply Google "online storage" or "online backup" to list the possibilities.

Remember...

• You do not need to backup your complete computer.  You do not need to backup items you can re-install.   You only need to backup your data.  Data can be:
  • Documents such as Word, Excel, financial etc
  • Pictures and videos
  • Music files
• Besides backing up to a folder on your computer, you should also backup to an external source such as:
  • USB Flash Drive
  • External hard drive
  • CD or DVD
  • Online Storage
• Make sure you know how to perform a restore in the event of data loss.  It makes no sense to back up if 1) you do not know what you are backing up, 2) where your backed up data is located and 3) you do not know how to retrieve it in case of data loss.

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