Tips & Tricks

Computing Terms

Backup -

To backup simply means to copy files to another disk. This can be in the form of using a program designed to do backups or just doing a straight copy from your computer to a floppy (or a bunch of them) a zip disk, or CD-RW.

Now, here's my advice for easier backups:

One question that seems to come up all the time is. "If I do a re-format and re-install every year or two, how can I be sure I get all my important files?"

I use to have a terrible time with this one. I would hunt through every folder on my hard drive searching for my data. And let me tell ya, I would still miss stuff and lose it.

Well, a long time ago, I decided to keep any file I create (documents) or want to save (i.e. downloaded software) in the My Documents folder. Then when I go to backup my info, I know it's all in one place. I back up My Documents and it's a done deal. I have it all.

I also advocate putting sub-folders into the My Documents folder. You can do this from most "Save As" dialog boxes by clicking the "New folder" icon. You can also
do it from Explorer by opening the My Documents folder, right-clicking on a blank area, then selecting New, Folder from the resulting menu.

One final idea for our more advanced users:

If you find yourself doing the re-format thing fairly often, you may want to partition off a section of your hard drive for your data. If you keep all your information on a separate drive, you can re-format your Windows drive all you want and your data stays safe on the other drive partition.

A word of warning though. If you decide to do this, only keep data (documents, spreadsheets, pictures, etc) or downloads on the drive. If you install programs to it, you may find that when you re-format you need to re-install those programs anyway because they had DLL files that were living in the Windows System folder.

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