Backing Up Your Computer

Backing up your PC is complicated, yet so simple. The question you need to ask yourself first is what do you need to backup? What, if lost, would leave you in a pickle?


Creating an image of your machine:

If you have ever purchased a brand name PC, like Dell or Compaq, then you’re familiar with a restore CD. It restores your computer to the state you received it in and usually takes a matter of minutes. You can get your PC setup as you want it and create an image of your hard drive to save to CD or another hard drive, for example. There are a few programs that do this for you, are easy to use, but none of them are free. One that does not offer a demo, but can be purchased in any store is Norton’s Ghost. Norton’s is an excellent program and I actually own that and the following two:

Acronis True Image:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2236.html

Powerquest Drive Image:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download147.html

Also, if you do not have a CD\DVD burning program, Nero Burning ROM is not only an excellent choice, but also can create a bootable CD with a mirror image of your drive. I use this myself. There are 2 versions available and sometimes you may have received a version in a bundle with your new computer:

http://majorgeeks.com/Nero_Burning_Rom_d633.html
http://majorgeeks.com/Nero_Premium_Edition_d2228.html

These are excellent choices to save you hours of time reinstalling, but remember that the image is only where you saved it, so anything you install afterwards will be lost unless you back up.



A bit about backing up individual programs or files:

If you work with Microsoft Word a lot creating documents, then you are probably aware that these documents are saved in one location as .doc files. The same applies with many other programs, but since there are thousands of programs out there; I have no way to tell you what files to back up. In general, it’s as simple as looking. For example, a banking program may have you opening and closing certain files (similar to the way Word opens .doc files) so you need to pay attention to these files when you open or close and see what they are called. Don’t forget to check your programs options for a backup option, its possible your program may have an export and import tool as well.

From here, you can back these files up to floppy, a second hard drive or a writeable CD. I believe every computer should have 2 hard drives. It is fast and rarely do 2 hard drives fail simultaneously. Should your computer need to be reformatted, you can almost always reinstall your program and copy these files back to the installation folder to open as needed. Worst case scenario; back up whole folders so at least you can have someone help you restore important files if needed.

Optionally, you can sometimes copy a whole program folder and put it back on a fresh install, create a shortcut to it and run, but this does not always work. If you have access to another computer, you can try copying a program to another machine and seeing if it works before you need it. Since a install routine might place system files into the Windows (or other) folders, the program may not run without being properly installed, or taking a lot of time to find and insert missing files needed for the program to run. I have done this, it’s not fun and its time consuming, which is why I explained you need to know what files are actually being used.

If you are not familiar with moving files around, you can browse our back section and look for an automated backup tool. These can back up files or folders as you tell it so your backups can be done automatically. I would like to point you to a specific program, but it really depends on what you want to back up and how often as well as your experience and what program makes you comfortable.