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BACK UP NOW!!
By Scott Mielentz
There are few things certain in
life, death and taxes. Add a third, hard drive failure!
The failure of a
hard drive is a nasty business, especially if you don't have a verbatim copy of
your drive backed up elsewhere.
There are many ways
you can unintentionally lose information on a computer. A power surge,
lightning, floods. And most times equipment just fails due to age.
If you regularly
make backup copies of your files and keep them in a separate place, you can get
some, if not all, of your information back, in the event something happens to
the originals on your computer.
Deciding what to
back up is highly personal. Anything you cannot replace easily should be at the
top of your list. Before you get started, make a checklist of files to back up.
This will help you determine what to back up, and also give you a reference
list in the event you need to retrieve a backed-up file. Here are some file
suggestions to get you started.
•Bank records
and other financial information
•Digital
photographs
•Software you
purchased and downloaded from the Internet
•Music you
purchased and downloaded from the Internet
•Personal
projects
•Your e-mail
address book [PST file]
•Your
Microsoft Outlook calendar
•Your Internet
Explorer bookmarks
The importance of backing up
The
first thing a new or experienced computer user should learn is---- the
importance of backing up. Are you still not backing up your data? You should
know this by now: computers can and do fail. The problem is that you usually don’t
get any warning before it's too late. This has happened to many people. In
extreme cases, it has put companies out of business. Computers are becoming
more and more reliable. This creates a false sense of security - we begin to
think all our data are safe and secure and will never go away. It's not true -
and never will be. If you don't back up your computer system regularly, you are
playing Russian roulette with your data. Backups are really a necessity, and ONLY
YOU are responsible for making backups of your files!!
BOTTOM LINE- DON’T
FORGET TO BACKUP!
Till next time happy
computing!
Scott Mielentz
Mac/PC TechOnCall
Editors
Note: Thanks to Scott Mielentz, owner of Mac/PC TechOnCall
for making this column possible. The above comments were in response to a question
or problem encountered by one of our Heights residents. We hope you found the
information useful and informative. If you have computer related questions you
can email techoncall@adelphia.net.
We welcome your comments.