PC Problems

Backing up your PC is rather important if you run a business and keep your records on computer but even if you don’t you’ll likely have photos, music, CV’s or at least a few emails that you’d prefer not to loose.

It always amazes me how few people backup any data on their pc whether they use it for business purposes or not. Everyone looses everything on their pc at least once in the pc’s life, its happened me a few times and the feeling is NOT good! Heres a few tips on how to do it in case not knowing how is the reason for the lack of backing up!

What to Backup?

• The My Documents folder – this should cover all your photos, music and documents.
• Browser Bookmarks/Favorites – Open Internet Explorer and go to ‘File – Import & Export’ and export your favorites to a file (save it to the my documents folder).
• Email and Email Accounts – Open Outlook Express and go to ‘File – Export’ then go to ‘Tools – Accounts’ and highlight each email account and click ‘Export’ on the right. Again, save any exported files to the my documents folder.
• Email Messages – In Outlook Express go to ‘Tools – Options – Maintenence – Store Folder’ and make a note of the location in the popup box. Go there and copy all contents of that folder to a new folder in your my documents.
• If you have any files on the desktop or anywhere else on the pc, move them to the my documents folder just to keep things tidy, then you only have to back up one place.
• Registry – Click ‘Start – Run’ and type ‘Regedit’ in the box then ‘OK’. In the Registry editor click ‘File – Export’ and save the backup in the (you guessed it!) my documents folder.

How to Backup?

• You need a device to backup to first off and if theres not a lot of data to backup you might get away with a blank CD or DVD. If theres a ton of data then you’ll need a second hard drive, either inside the PC or easier, an external hard drive which are available pretty cheaply these days. Make sure you buy one bigger than the size of your main PC drive so it can fit everything in.
• Once you sort out a backup device you simply drag the whole my documents folder to it and you’re done. Make sure to backup everything mentioned above first though.
• FREE software exists to automatically manage your backup onto an external device for you, my favorite is Karen’s Replicator. You simply tell it what to copy, where to copy to and how often and it handles everything.
• You might also like to try the new trend of backing up online which is the simplest and most secure method. Choose one of the many online backup services such as Putplace and all you have to do is tell it what you want to backup and it does it all automatically for you.

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