Backing up Data on Your Computer

How many of you reading this have had some sort of computer failure where you lost "important" information on your computer? Well, if you haven't yet, your time is coming..... Hard drives will fail eventually, and unless you establish a method for backing up your data in a separate storage device, you will likely experience this gut wrenching event at one point of your computing experience.

This blog will give you 3 techniques for backing up your data to help reduce the pain of a computer hardware crash. There are several ways to back up your important data, but these 3 are fairly simple to do.

Easiest Backup Technique
This technique requires you to have a "thumb drive", or "memory stick". You've probably seen these in ads, or others carrying them in their pocket. Essentially these are small "hard drives" (actually they use "flash" memory, and are sometimes called "flash drives") that you can plug into one of your USB ports on your computer. Then, when you click on "My Computer" in your Start Menu, you will see a line that says "removable drive" listed along with your C:, D:, and other computer drives. Thumb drives come in all sorts of capacities, from 256 megabytes (mb) to over 32 gigabytes (gb), and prices from $5 to $40. My recommendation is to buy one no smaller then 4gb. This should be plenty of storage for general computer users. If you have alot of music or photos that you want to back up, then the next backup option likely will be more appropriate. Here are photos of "thumb drives".










To Backup using a "Thumb Drive":

• Insert thumb drive in USB port on a computer
• Click on "Start", and then "My Computer" and verify the thumb drive shows on the list of drives under "My computer". If it doesn't, remove thumb drive, and reinstall - check again.
• To back up info, go to the info you want to backup (eg. folder(s), files(s), image(s), etc.) on your C: drive, hilight the items and select "Copy" (or hold the CONTROL button down and hit the "C" key)
• Now, navigate to the thumb drive listed under your "My Computer", and double click on it to open it. Now, hit "Paste" (or hold down the CONTROL button and hit the "V" key) to put a copy of the file(s)/folder(s) on your thumb drive. That's it!

Note: it might be good to set up a "Backup Folder" on the thumb drive prior to storing data on it. That way, you have a separate folder for backed up data on your thumb drive, and can use the thumb drive to put other info you want on the drive separately. To set up a "Backup Folder" on your thumb drive:

• Double click on the "thumb drive (listed as Removeable Drive)" listed under "My Computer" to open it.
• Click on your "right" mouse button, and in the window that opens select "New folder"
• A new folder will appear with the name highlighted - just type BACKUP FOLDER and hit enter

Now, when you paste info onto the thumb drive, make sure you double click on the BACKUP FOLDER to open it before you "Paste" (or hold down the CONTROL button and hit the "V" key) to put a copy of the file(s)/folder(s) in the BACKUP FOLDER

Back Up File using a "Portable Hard Drive"
The latest storage method to become popular is the "portable hard drive". These come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and can store from 30gb-1000gb (or 1 terabyte (tb)). This type is best for when you have large amounts of photos, video, music files that require alot of storage space. These are similar to "Thumb Drives", in that they work by plugging it into a USB port, and show as a "removeable drive" under your "My Computer" drives. These portable drives may also require you to plug in a power cord to operate. Here are a couple examples of portable hard drives.









Backing up to these devices is just the same as with the Thumb Drive:

• Insert USB port from the "portable hard drive" into the computer
• Click on "Start", and then "My Computer" and verify the portable hard drive shows on the list of drives under "My computer". If it doesn't, remove USB plug, and reinstall - check again.
• To back up info, go to the info you want to backup (eg. folder(s), files(s), image(s), etc.) on your C: drive, hilight the items and select "Copy" (or hold the CONTROL button down and hit the C key)
• Now, navigate to the portable hard drive listed under your "My Computer", and double click on it to open it. Now, hit "Paste" (or hold down the CONTROL button and hit the V key) to put a copy of the file(s)/folder(s) on your portable hard drive. That's it!

Using a Backup Program
Finally, the best solution to backing up your data is to use a program installed on your computer, that does this on a regular basis, and doesn't require you to do anything after you set it up. There are tons of programs out on the market, but I found a very good "freeware" backup program called Cobian Backup. This program allows you to select the files/folders you want to have backed up, let's you select how frequently (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.), and allows you to store the info on a different drive (thumb, external/portable hard drive, or 2nd internal hard drive). IMPORTANT - YOU NEED A DIFFERENT LOCATION THAN YOUR C: DRIVE! This program will allow you to back up data automatically (set a time when your computer will be on, and it runs at that time), or manually (you open the Cobian Backup program and select "run program").

To use this program, its is necessary that the 2nd drive (thumb drive, external/portable HD, or 2nd internal HD) connected to your computer. Many leave this drive attached to the computer all the time, and only disconnect when needing to take the drive to another computer. Then its like having another hard drive on your computer!

Rather than detail the steps to setup "Cobian Backup" in this blog, if you are interested in setting up this program on your computer, contact me and I'll walk you thru it.

There you go, some easy steps to help you protect that important information you store on your computer. Believe me, once you have a hard drive crash and lose your contact lists, favorite photos, iPod music, or important personal info, you'll be wishing you had done this!

- Rick