Backups

Yes, yes. I know. It’s that same old waffle about how you should backup your PC, etc, etc. 

Everyone knows that they should do it, but everyone leaves it until ‘later’.  Only, like I did, ‘later’ comes and smacks you around the head after something bad has happened and things are lost.

Why not think about it a little, enough to do something good, and then forget about it?

Windows 7 has a Backup and Restore application built in and allows you to select the files and folders that you want to save, point them to an external or network drive and simply schedule the task to happen whenever you want it to.

“But I haven’t got an external drive?”

Maybe you don’t.  Quick search at Aria.co.uk to find that they’re selling a 1TB (1024GB) USB External hard drive for under £66.

£66… 

That might sound a lot if you only have a tenner in your back-pocket, but seriously, I even thought about buying another one, as £66 to save all your work/photos/etc on? Magic.

Chances are you could probably find a bigger/faster/cheaper one elsewhere online, but I doubt there’ll be a lot in it.  Either way, you have to think about how you’d feel if your computer as you know it disappeared, as people forget that things do still get stolen these days;  people who I used to see when doing home PC call-outs seem to think that they’re safe from viruses, malware and any other nasties out there in the wild, but didn’t give a second thought to what would happen if they had their house broken into, and the laptop with all their life’s holiday photos, or photos of the kids, late parents/grandparents/etc.  All those memories are just as ‘gone’ as if a virus trashed the hard drive, or even if the drive itself failed.

That’s my story, the one of the failing disk drive.  It’s easy to forget about the earlier holidays that I have lost in addition to the ‘bigger’ holidays that we’ve had, such as when we went to Niagara Falls in Canada.  All these photos were arrogantly ‘safe’ on my new shiny 300GB hard drive, but even new drives can fail and I can vouch for that. 

So, I’ve been stung. Not as bad as it could have been, as we didn’t have children at that point, and I would have been absolutely gutted if I had lost the photos of my little one during his first weeks in the hospital, or doing funny things at home; you know, the sort of photos you will want to look back on in years to come.

Windows 7 makes the process easy, I promise. 

If you’re a ‘bit of a billy’ on the PC and normally fumble your way around it to make it work to a fashion, then follow the standard settings in the wizard that walks you through it all, and you’re away. 

If you’re a touch above that and feel you know what you’re doing and want to hand-select the files and folders to backup, then fine, do it that way.

Fake a disaster and restore something

Might sound a little overkill, but then, what’s the point in backing something up if you don’t know how to get it back?

If you’ve got access to another computer in the house, why not plug your newly purchased and backed-up external drive into that and find out how easy it is to get to your files?

“But I haven’t got Windows 7…” (yet)

Well, quite possibly not. And that goes for a lot of people out there who haven’t literally just bought a new PC. Quite a lot of people out there are still using Windows XP and for one reason or another didn’t upgrade to Vista.

I’ll find out about the standard backup/restore applications in Windows XP and Vista and will put a blog post up on here soon.

Failing that, I’ll see if I can find a relatively cheap third-party application that your mum can buy and install without needing help from someone in a call-centre in New Deli.