A timely backup can help you move forward

If you use a computer in your work, you've probably experienced the upheaval in your work day when a serious computer malfunction occurs. It's happened to most of us - a program that suddenly stops responding, an undecipherable computer error message or even the infamous "blue screen of death".

When it happens you can basically throw the day's schedule out the window because your job has suddenly morphed into computer troubleshooter and repair technician.

It's almost impossible to avoid these problems altogether but you can take steps to minimize their occurrence. Over the next 2 weeks, The Hungry Horse Blog will present a series of posts designed to help you keep your computer running smoothly. Today's post: "A Timely Backup Can Help You Move Forward" is the perfect first step in common sense computer maintenance.

Why back up? The answer is pretty obvious. Lost data can kill or seriously cripple your business. A few minutes a day, or week, could save your bacon in more ways than one. If a hard drive crashes, your data could be simply unrecoverable. Are you prepared to loose all of the information on your computer?

Doing a backup is easy. In fact, you can use the Microsoft Task Scheduler to have backups done automatically. Backing up your computer should be done at least weekly and more is better.

Since 1.44 Floppies can no longer hold enough data for backing up today, I suggest that you purchase a recordable CD-ROM Drive. Make sure the CD drive you buy says "R/W" which means "Read/Write". Otherwise you won't be able to record or "burn" data onto it. You can purchase a good name brand CDR/W for $30 to $60 retail. One reason CD's are popular backup devices is because once the data is recorded, it can't be accidentally erased or corrupted and can be stored almost anywhere (except in the back window of your car in which case they turn into warped useless plastic :0{> ).

Another option is an external USB hard drive. They cost about $100 for 100 Gigabytes. This is a better method than a CDR/W Drive if you have a lot of data to back-up. You can also build your own external hard drive very easily. Just buy a standard hard drive plus an enclosure kit ($25) with a USB interface. It takes just a few minutes to install the hard drive into the enclosure and to plug it into your computers USB port.

The first time you backup your computer, be prepared to wait several hours (depending of course on the amount of data). Microsoft gives you several backup options (documents and settings; everything on your computer; or choose what you want to backup). The first time through, choose everything. This process will also create a bootable floppy disk with all you need to rebuild your computer if your system disk crashes.

For subsequent backups, you should specify the drives and folders you want to back up. If you choose "everything", the backup will also include the previous backup files which can be very large.

You should also choose the "incremental" backup mode which only backs up those files that have been added or changed since the last backup. Choosing these options will result in a much quicker backup.

Of course backing up your computer is just the first (albeit most important) step in proper computer maintenance. In our next post "Would you turn down a free tune-up for your car?", we'll discuss ways to keep your computer current and safe.