Keeping Data Safe

I do a great deal of traveling with my laptop. Most of this travel is just
around town (even home offices get a little stuffy after a while). After I purchased
my new Toshiba, I thought of having it insured against theft, but after thinking
about it, I realized just how inept that type of loss protection really is for
a computer. I would not really see the loss of the laptop as the problem, I
would see the loss of my data as the real problem, and the real hit to my income.

I really hate to say it, but my data is my life. Whether that data is an article
such as this one, a website I'm creating for a client or my list of clients
with information. Heck, just the loss of my calendar would be enough to cost
me a few hundred in cash and time, and the data builds up fast. It is hidden
in hard to remember places. For example, your favorites/bookmark list; a reference
library you have been building for many months, or even years. If you are like
me, that resource has grown huge and replacing it would be impossible (because
I would never remember all of the Internet cubby holes I have found).

Quick backups should be part of your daily or weekly routine. I work with a
great many home users who feel that backing up is something the professional
or office computers need done, but the home computer doesn't have to do this,
which is your choice of course. In my mind this might have been true before
resumes, home photos and personal finance programs became everyday items in
our lives.

The first trick we need to learn is the separation of programs and data. Data
is any file that we use with the program, such as a picture of our kid's soccer
game or our resume. That is data. To open our resume we might need MS Word,
but we have that program on the install disk, we don't need to back that up.
Our data is what we need. So we need to get into the habit of keeping our data
in a single area or as few areas as possible. Windows has provided the My Documents
folder for this very reason. If we make sub folders in the My Documents area,
and keep our data under that main directory, then backing up becomes fairly
easy for us.

The next thing we need is a list of all the places we have data, which are
not document files or pictures. I have already brought up two which are good
examples; the Favorites/Bookmark area and my Calendar. Once a day I use the
browser, and my Calendar program to export my lists to files inside the My Documents
folder. I use the same export filenames, I don't keep histories. I just over-write
the existing file from the day before. A full list of these areas might be more
difficult to compile than you believe at first. Financial or bookkeeping programs,
games (as in the saved game files for you computer games), MP3 play lists from
programs such as WinAmp, should all be ferreted out for your backup.

Once you have compiled your list of back-up areas, then you can back up the
files by hand to a CD ROM or external drive, or get a program such as Paragon,
which I personally like (thankfully you don't have to take my word for how good
Paragon is, they have a free trail you can download from their website).

Whatever program you purchase to do your backups for you, make sure you follow
through and understand the Restore process. I can't tell you how many people
I've talked to over the years that have no idea how to restore their computer
from the backups. It really is amazing.

Another item to keep in mind with backups is security. Paragon will do full
drive backups for you to an external drive or DVD, which is great; just keep
in mind that all of your data, and passwords are now sitting on a disk or drive
that is external to your computer. Many home users feel this isn't really necessary
until they remember all of the login and passwords for Internet accounts they
have let the browser "remember" for them.

It really is amazing how much information we keep, store and use once we begin
to rely on computers for our work and communications. If you sit down and think
about your computer being "gone", really "Gone" then items
will start to come to mind, and it can boggle the will in a short time. Backups
are important to anyone, not just at the office. Recovering a system is a time
consuming process, but some data simply can not be re-created.