Backing Up Your Data
Generating correct and timely back-ups is one of the most important, yet also one of the most neglected areas of computing. Backing up your data should be at the very top of your computer maintenance list, right next to virus and spyware protection. Without a data backup you are running the risk of losing your data for good. The chances are it will happen, don't think that you don't have to worry about it!

Why You Should Back Up
Data loss can happen in many ways. One of the most common causes is a physical failure of themedia the data is stored on, e.g., hard drives, USB flash drives, CD/DVD ROM, etc. If you are not using removable media at college then you most likely have everything saved on your PC or laptop’s hard drive. But that hard drive will not live forever. There are only two types of hard drives - the ones that have failed and the ones that will fail. Normally hard drives will live for years without incident but eventually they will die. It might happen gradually, by more and more bad clusters accumulating until most of the drive is unusable. Or it might happen suddenly, the hard drive just dies without warning.

Another possible cause for data loss is power failure or spikes. It can result in losing the document you were working on because you did not save it before the power failed. It might even result in the loss of your entire hard drive because a power surge fried your motherboard. Also worth mentioning is data loss through virus attacks. There are plenty of nasty computer viruses out there that will delete files on an infected machine.

Remember that floppy disks are a bad choice for storage media. They are only really useful for temporary storage and maybe for transporting information, but not for permanent data storage. Always use USB flash drives or external hard drives instead of floppies. Alternatively, consider storing your data on a CD or DVD. Bottom line – do not use floppy disks for permanent storage.

What data should you back up?
If you are at college and you have an active CSN account you can use the server side folders provided for you. The Z: drive is accessible from the ‘My Computer’ icon on the desktop. In case you think that you don't really have anything worth backing up ask yourself what will happen when it comes time to hand in your work for those all important assessments. Are you still sure you don’t need to do back-ups?

Let's go through just a few items to jog your memory. Let's start with your favourite places on the Internet and that long list of bookmarks. Do you want to lose all those? How about the e-mail addresses from all your friends? It would take a long time to accumulate those again. What about that to-do list you wrote? Or about that nice picture somebody e-mailed you and that you saved? How about that family history you collected over the years and put into a database? Maybe you have a large number of work related documents for classes like Word documents or Powerpoint presentations or spreadsheets that you created at college and don't have a copy on your home PC?

These are just the most common examples, and I know that after thinking about it for a while you will realise that there is a lot of information you don't want to lose. That's why you should back up your data.

How do I back up?
Backing up means keeping a safe copy of your important files in a separate location for retrieval in case of an emergency. Keeping a copy of your data on the same media but in another folder is not a good idea. A better strategy is put it on a separate media.

Another way of backing up data is to another hard drive or a server. If you have multiple PCs at home and they are networked, you can copy data files to the hard drive of another PC on the network for backup. That way, if one PC goes down, you still have the data on the other PC. The advantage is that it is pretty quick and easy to do, but it does take away some hard drive space and it does not allow off-site storage of the backups. At CSN you can always use your Z: drive of course as this is a separate media location!

Preferably, you will have two backups on two separate types of media in two places. Actually three back ups is not a bad idea either (I’m serious). You can also avail of free disk space
online and upload your data for backup, e.g., Google docs. However, you will be dependent on your ISP and the disk space provider to be up and running for data retrieval. If you have lots of data and only a low-end broadband connection, upload will take quite some time.

Always be organized
To make backing up your data easier, it helps if your data is organised. If you save all your data in the install directory of the program the data is used in, e.g. Word documents in
c:\Program Files\Office\Word, Excel documents in c:\Program Files\Office\Excel, you will have a lot of fun hunting down all your files and making sure you didn't forget anything when
backing up. That gets annoying real fast. Instead, you should make a point of saving all your documents, no matter what it is, in one central location. By definition, that's what the ‘My Documents’ folder is for.

A good strategy is to make subfolders to store your work in. Use the folder model to store your important documents and subcategorise those more. Don't forget to back up your bookmarks and e-mail data.

Last, remember to back up regularly. You don't want to have something happen to your data, then restore your backup just to realise it is 6 months old. Depending on how much work you do, back up either weekly or at least monthly. It is also a good idea to store your backups off-site, e.g. at home.