How to Backup Your Computer - Version of 5.6.08

By Howard Jones

 

Note: This material was initially gathered for a presentation in 2004 and has been updated for tonight’s meeting to include more recent information and is applicable to the Microsoft Vista operating system. The revised presentation will be added to the TVCUC Website – www.tvcuc.org.

This will be an informative presentation structured to enable you to save and protect the information you have created using the applications in your computer. This handout includes instructions to clarify “what” is important to back up, “when” to back up and “how” to back up your valuable data. There’s another element that is important to understand and that is “why” it’s necessary to back up your files.

If there are questions during the presentation, please ask them. If there are questions after the presentation, please address them to me at hwjaaj@charter.net. Members of the club are encouraged to contribute their experience during the presentation.

Background:

There’s a broad range of computer hardware represented within the club. Some have 5-6 year old computers with Windows 2000 and XP for their operating systems. Many have replaced their older computers in the last year or so with new ones that use Vista. Although there are features of your computer hardware and its operating system that make “how” you back up your data different, the reasons to back up are the same for all of us. We’ll discuss the “how” later.

I’d first like to discuss why it’s important to “back up” the data/information you have created on your computer. There are several things that can happen that can make it impossible to find/access/recover/use the data/information you have saved to your computers hard drive. They are listed below in the order most commonly seen in my recent experience.

  • Virus/worm attacks when an attachment to an email message is opened. Such an attack can render your computer’s operating system unable to perform, including making it impossible to copy/transfer your data from your computer.
     
  • Spyware/adware threats come in different flavors. The spyware agent can be malware (modifies system settings, and can perform undesirable tasks on your system), hijacker (redirects your browser to web sites), dialer (dials a service, most likely porn sites, for which you can be billed!), trojan horse (is attached to a program, and performs undesirable tasks on your system), collectware (collects information about you and your surfing habits).
     
  • Hard drive failure. This can be an “impending” failure, in which case you “might” have time to save data, or a complete and catastrophic failure in which case the hard drive is not salvageable. Hopefully you will see a “Stop Error Message”, often referred to as “the Blue Screen of Death”.

At this point some of you may be thinking, “I know all that” – and for some of you this may be new information. What’s important is that everyone understands the implications of events/circumstances that have the potential to render something you have generated or saved on your computer, unavailable/gone – forever.

What’s Not Covered:

The focus of this presentation is the most basic saving of information that is stored on your computer that you would feel very unhappy about if it’s lost. There are references to supplementary information, at the end of the presentation on the Website, to help you search for a more in-depth understanding of the broad aspects of the material presented. But I do not intend to cover the following.

  • Backing up your entire hard drive/drive imaging
  • Partitioned hard drives
  • Multiple hard drives
  • Networked computers
  • Registry backup
  • Symantec's Norton GoBack/restore utilities

Another topic that doesn’t require much conversation is that of saving data in applications that have a built-in backup feature such as Quicken, MS Money and Family Tree Maker. When saving data from these programs to a CD, it is recommended that you have two backup data disks and that you alternate between them for another measure of protection should one of the disks become corrupted. Many computer users are now backing up data from these programs on flash drives.

What’s Important to Backup?

The three most common sets of data that would be missed if your computer malfunctioned are My Documents, photographs (which may be filed in you’re My Documents folder) and your Email address book (and perhaps your Emails if you are in the habit of saving them). For most computer users, the information created in applications for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. is saved in My Documents. My Documents is the MS Windows default for saving data. Whether you have created subfolders or used the default subfolders, for My Music, My eBooks or My Pictures, they can all be saved together.

There are many ways to organize the information that you create in the use of your computer, such as setting up special folders under Local Disk (C:\). It’s only important to know where your data is stored so that you can select those files to be backed up.

There is another category of files that one may want to save and that’s information in applications that do not have a built in backup feature. MS Greetings Workshop is one of those programs. I found the saved projects in C:\ Program Files\Graphics\Projects. Another such application/program would be one in which you save recipes. One must determine in the application where saved files are located and then use Windows Explore to locate them in order to back them up.

When Should You Backup Files?

The frequency for backing up your data depends on how you use your computer. For example, you want to back up your financial data – Quicken or MS Money – every time you change or add data/information. When you write letters or add addresses to Outlook Express, there’s new information that would be lost if your computer malfunctioned. However, if you backed up My Documents or OE once a week or once a month, you would be salvaging the majority of your records.

Photographs are another matter. Depending on how important your photographs are you may want to save all images on a CD or DVD in addition to your hard drive. The decision to a great extent will be based on how the images were initially created. If they’re on a CD from WalMart and you load them onto your hard drive so that you can send them to friends and family, you already have a “backup”, the original disk. But if you downloaded them from a digital camera to your hard drive, you may want to create a backup CD at that time.

How Do You Back Up Your Data?

Your options for backup media at this point are a function of what hardware you have. Older computers may have a CD burner but not a DVD burner so your only option may be to use CDs. If you’re working with photographs you most likely use a CD burner and probably have a large hard drive for more storage space. Somewhere between CDs (700 MB) and DVDs (4.7 GB), optical drives are most popular for data backup. External hard drives have become a standard for many (300 GB or larger) and more recently USB flash drives with capacities from 256/512 MB up to 8 GB (16 – 64 GB are close to being available at “reasonable prices”). And for many with new computers you will be aware of services that offer “online data backup services”.

But let’s stay with the basics for most of us. You’ve identified the files/data you want to backup. I generally make notes on paper to list the files I want to backup and to note their size. How do you find out the size of the files? Open My Computer and open Folders in the toolbar. What you see is the file structure of your computer on the left 1/3rd of your monitor screen. Locate the My Documents folder under Documents and Settings and your User Name. Right click on My Documents and a dialog box opens. At the bottom is Properties. Left click on properties to open another dialog box. Under the General tab it will tell you “Size on disk” of the My Documents file.

Using this process look at the other data/files you want to “Back Up”. You can always break up large folders into smaller files. It’s much easier if you have structured you’re My Documents into subfolders. Photographs can be copied to a CD or DVD in the same manner. Again, it’s easiest if your photos are saved in folders, categorized by families, holidays, vacations, etc. It not only makes them easier to backup but to find in order to use them.

The next step is to copy the files to media. This will work with a CD, DVD or an external device – flash drive or hard drive. This next series of steps will work with all operating systems including Windows 2000, XP and Vista. Windows XP and Vista have built-in backup utilities, which I will address later.

Open My Computer and open Folders in the toolbar. What you see is the file structure of your computer on the left 1/3rd of your monitor screen. Locate the My Documents folder under Documents and Settings and your User Name. Right click on My Documents and a dialog box opens. At the bottom is Properties. Left click on properties to open another dialog box. Under the General tab it will tell you “Size on disk” of the My Documents file.

Right click on the file you want to save to backup media and a dialog box will open. Move the curser about half way down to Send To, which will open a smaller dialog box with a series of options. Earlier you will have to have decided what media you’re going to send the file to for backup based on the size of the file you’re backing up. For the most part I’m assuming you’ll be sending the file you’re backing up to a CD, DVD or an external hard drive or flash drive.

To backup your Outlook Express data, in OE go to File, Export, and select Address Book and/or Messages. Save them as a Text File (Comma Separated Values - .CSV) to your backup media.

Supplementary Information:

I encourage the use of the Internet to search for information that helps me understand how best to understand and use my computer. Therefore, here’s the link to the Google Toolbar if you don’t already have it –

An excellent tool to see/document the hardware and software makeup of your computer is the Belarc Advisor. It is not an interactive tool but one that enables you to make a printed record of your computer for reference before making changes at a later date. It may be downloaded free at -  

To help in the preparation of this presentation I did several Google searches that returned information that may be of interest to club members. The following links were obtained by doing a search for – “How to Backup Your Computer” –

To better understand spyware/adware I found the following Website –

To better understand viruses I found the following Websites –

Presented at the Tellico Village Computer Users Club November 2nd, 2004 meeting by Howard Jones
Updated for presentation at the Tellico Village Computer Users Club May 6th, 2008 meeting by Howard Jones