Introduction
We use our computer to pay bills, store family photos, send and receive email, and download our favorite Elvis songs. Well, you get the idea. It is well on its way to becoming the center of the household, replacing or outnumbering the television set. Microsoft even has a server marketed for the home, allowing you to centralize and manage your network devices. With technology increasingly weaving into the home environment, data protection and recovery is ever more important. More people than ever will be forced to play IT Manager of the home to ensure critical personal data is secure and protected in the event of a disastrous computer crash. Here are the life-saving steps you need to take to protect yourself.
Get Organized
The first thing you need to do is decide what data you want to backup and where this data is located. In the Windows world, most of your important data is housed in your user profile. Your user profile can be found under the Documents and Settings folder in Windows XP and in the Users folder in Windows Vista. This profile folder holds your personal files (in the My Documents folder), Outlook Express e-mail messages, Internet Explorer Favorites and cookies, and information about your settings and preferences. You’re sure to have other personal data scattered about, so now is a good time to organize this data so it’s easy for you to find. This not only helps keep you organized, but also makes finding or restoring these files in a backup/recovery situation much easier.
Find a Place for Your Backups
As humor would have it, by default the Windows XP backup utility will propose you save all of your backups to your floppy drive (drive A). Although this is neither practical nor recommended as it would probably take hundreds of floppy disks to hold all the information necessary to backup your data. So be sure to have CD’s, DVD’s, an external hard drive, or even another computer on your network set aside as storage for your backup data.
Now, in a perfect world you would store your backup data in an entirely separate location, well away from your computer. This way, should a comet smash into this part of the house, you will still have backup data safely tucked away. You could put your backups in a fire proof safe, separate room of the house, or at your Grandmother’s house, assuming you can trust her. This would be the safest, “I’m paranoid” way to ensure your data is available in a worst case scenario.
Backup Your Stuff:
Backing up your data is critical to ensuring you have what you need when something goes wrong. A proper backup strategy can be established in only a few minutes and you will be thankful you took the time when you come face to face with the famous “blue screen of death” or when one of your kids decides to delete a few of your files to make room for their cool new video downloads.
Windows XP and Vista both provide a free backup utility built right in to the operating system, so there is really no need to rush out and buy anything, but if you need or prefer to use another backup utility there are plenty to choose from. Some free options can be found on SourceForge, a great open source site with a ton of choices.
The following instructions will outline the steps to backup your data using the free Windows XP and Windows Vista backup utility.
Windows XP Backup:
If you are using Windows XP Professional, the backup utility should be ready for use. If using Windows Home Edition, you might need to install this yourself. To install the Windows backup utility follow the steps outlined below:
Install Windows Backup Utility for Windows Home Edition:
- Insert your Windows XP CD into the drive and, if necessary, double-click the CD icon in My Computer.
- On the Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP screen, click Perform Additional Tasks.
- Click Browse this CD.
- In Windows Explorer, double-click the ValueAdd folder, then Msft, and then Ntbackup.
- Double-click Ntbackup.msi to install the Backup utility.
OK, now the good stuff. We’ll move on to actually configuring the Windows backup process. Windows incorporates a user-friendly wizard to help guide you through this process. To start this backup wizard:
Start the Backup or Restore Wizard
- Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup to start the wizard.
- Click Next to skip past the opening page, choose Back up files and settings from the second page, and then click Next. You should see the page shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1
It may be tempting to choose the option for “All information on this computer”, however this is probably not the best solution. Depending on the amount of software you have installed and other miscellaneous items you have downloaded, your backup could add up quickly and become too large to manage. The option that gives you the most flexibility is the “Let me choose what to back up” option. Once you have made your selection, click the Next button. This takes you to the "Items to Back Up" window shown in Figure 2 below which allows you to select the files and folders that you are specifically interested in. When finished press the Next button to move on.
Figure 2
Select Location to Store Your Backup Files:
At the "Backup Type, Destination, and Name window", you are asked to choose a backup location. As mentioned earlier, Windows will give you the default choice of the floppy drive (drive A), which you will most likely not want to choose. Alternitavely you may choose to backup to your computer’s own hard disk, Zip drive, shared network drive (such as another computer in your network), or an external hard disk drive, which you can purchase at a very reasonable price at any local computer hardware store.
Once you have chosen your backup location, you will need to enter a name for the file and click Next. This will take you to the final “Completing the Backup or Restore” page of the backup wizard.
Automating the Backup:
Now that you’ve taken the time to create your backup, it would behoove you to save this configuration and schedule it to repeat on a regular basis. This way, any changes made to your files and folders will be captured regularly. You will be sure to have the most up-to-date information in the event of a failure.
From the “Completing the Backup or Restore” page (Fig.3) Click the Advanced button, and click Next to open the "When to Back Up" page. Choose Later, and then click Set Schedule to open the Schedule Job dialog box shown in Figure 4 below:
Figure 3
The example in Fig. 4 below shows a weekly backup schedule to take place every Friday afternoon. You can set just about any schedule that makes sense for you by modifying these options. Once you click OK to save your changes, Windows XP will run the backup automatically. Once you have configured your backups to take place automatically, you will no longer need to worry about it, but you will need to be sure your computer is powered on as the backup utility has a hard time running when your computer is shut down or unplugged.
Figure 4
Windows Vista Backup:
The new Windows Vista operating system has tried to make backing up your data even easier. Whether that was accomplished or not is for you to decide. Depending on the version of Windows Vista you have installed, there should be two options available for you to backup your data. The first is the Automatic Backup, which will back up your files and other important data. The other option is the Complete PC Backup option, which is used to create an exact copy or image of your entire computer. This is a very useful feature as it allows you to essentially re-create your computer exactly as it was prior to any crash or data loss.
Starting Automatic Backup
To start or access the Vista Automatic Backup utility click the start button at the bottom-left hand corner of your desktop. Browse to All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and click the Backup Status and Configuration icon. From here select the “Set up automatic file backup” option as shown in Figure 5 below.
Figure 5
You will then be taken to the “Where do you want to save your backup” page shown in Figure 6 below. Here, you may choose a location to store your backups. You can choose to backup to CD, DVD, Hard Disk, or you may specify a network location. Once you have selected your location click the next button.
Figure 6
You will next arrive at the “Which file types do you want to back up” page that you see in Figure 7 below. Here you may specify the type of data that you want Windows to find and backup for you.
Figure 7
After you have selected the type of files you want to back up you can click next to be brought to the “How often do you want to create a backup” page as depicted in Fig. 8 below. You are presented with a series of drop down menus which allow you to configure a number of backup scheduling options. Click the button to save these settings and Windows will automatically perform your backups.
Figure 8
Windows Complete PC Backup
This is the other option available to Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise users. To start or access the Windows Complete PC Backup utility click the start button at the bottom-left hand corner of your desktop. Browse to All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and click the Backup Status and Configuration icon. From here select the “Complete PC Backup” option as depicted in the image in Figure 9 below.
Figure 9
Next, you are taken to a page where you need to specify the location of the backup image. This is the "Where do you want to save the backup" page as shown in Figure 10 below. You can choose an area on your hard disk, or you can create one or more DVDs.
Figure 10
You are then brought to the final page depicted in Figure 11 below where you will confirm your settings and begin the process to create a backup image of your entire computer.
Figure 11
With your data safely backed up you can rest easily tonight and take comfort knowing that your data is safe from harm and available to you when you need it most.