Even with the most reliable computer hardware and software, there is always the possibility of something going wrong. The most common causes of data loss include:

1. Human error � accidental file deletion, over-writing of files etc.
2. Hardware failure - Disks that are used constantly, or have not been
properly maintained may suffer from mechanical failure, over time heavy
file-loading or new software can cause the system to shutdown or reboot,
alternatively automatic file updates can cause a system to reboot when
files are still open and in use.
3. Software corruption can also corrupt data files to make them inaccessible
4. Virus attacks - every day new viruses are released into the open, and anti-
virus companies release updates to combat the problem. Virus attacks
have been steadily on the increase causing business data to be ever
more vulnerable.
5. Natural disasters � even with robust hardware, software and virus
protection, the threat from fire and flood remains.

The best defense is data backup. Backing up data is vital for businesses; lost information can cause a major crisis or worse, lead to business failure. Individuals who don't backup computer data run the same risk. While this may not cause financial ruin, it can certainly be frustrating and even heartbreaking. So why do so few of us practice data backup?

Here are the common excuses:

"I'm too busy to backup my computer." We are busy work, family and friends fill our days and leave us little time for boring things like computer maintenance. But today's backup software manufacturers make it easy. Through scheduled backups your system can automatically perform a backup that fits your needs at an interval you choose�without interrupting life.

"I don't know how to backup data." Like preparing for a natural disaster, most of us understand how important data backup is, but don't know where to start. A big step is deciding how you are going to store the data you backup.

"My computer won't crash." You've had your computer this long and haven't had problems so far why worry about computer backup now? Think about it you wear your seat belt even though you don't expect your car to crash everyday. Data backup is about protecting your data's future, but with computers, it isn't if you crash, it's when you crash.
In today's high-tech world of sneaky spyware and venomous viruses, you are in more danger of data loss than ever before. Computer viruses grew by as much as 11% during 2007 alone.

It's like exercising. Or flossing. You know you should do it, but you put it off. A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 35 percent of consumers neglect to make backup copies of digital content stored on their computers, even though 50 percent have lost important data in the past.

flaviuss, welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy your stay!
Rosie

I learned my lesson about backing up my computer. My computer crashed on New Years day with about 3 years worth of photos I didn't want to lose. My husband managed to recover my hard drive but it wasn't easy.

now I send all my photos to my Costco account for one thing. They will stay there forever, I guess in case I need them. Also, I got an external hard drive to back up at least monthly.

I definitely want to suggest to EVERYONE that they mark their calendar for a once-a-month must-do backup. I'm sure every one of us knows of someone who lost a ton of really important data. Backing up is VERY easy to do, and it only takes a few minutes to set up your computer to do it automatically. It can save you a world of grief.

Post here if you don't back up monthly and we will help you get started!

Okay, I'll go first. I haven't backed up in ages. It really needs to be automated for me. The ex used to run backups on both our PC's automatically. I've only backed up my docs since then.

So. . . what do I do?

Gotta go help w/cranky baby tonight--be back tomorrow)

If you have a Vista system, you're very lucky! Backing up is built into Vista and is fairly straightforward. Here is how to back up your important documents and files on a Vista system.

First, go to Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Backup Status and Configuration. That is where the backup program lives.

Click on the "Set up automatic file backup" link in the center of the window.

You'll be asked where to save your backup file. If at ALL possible, save it to a drive DIFFERENT than the one you are backing up files from. That is, if your files are on your C drive, do not save the backup file on C. Otherwise if your C drive crashes, you will lose both the original data and the backup file. I highly recommend buying an inexpensive external drive that you just plug into a USB port. You can even get one of those mini-plug-in-drives (the ones the size of a nail clipper) if you're just backing up a directory or two of important files.

Now you tell the system what to back up. In my case I tell it ONLY to back up my email and documents. These are the things that I would be traumatized by losing. I can manually back up my music files once a year, for example, and it's not a big deal if I lose some of those. If I had my mail file crash and lost all my mail, that would be heart-stopping for me.

Next you set the schedule. I highly recommend weekly. I set mine for Sundays at 10am, because by then I am asleep. Make sure of course your system is TURNED ON when you have your backup running!

That's it! The backup will run for its "first time" now to give you an initial starting point. Then, going forward, it will run every week on your schedule with no other thought or action required.

Give it a try and let us know how it works!

Windows XP has a nicely integrated backup program which makes it easy to back up your files once a week, without any work at all!

First, go to Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Backup. That is where the backup program lives.

Leave the program in Wizard mode and hit NEXT.

You want to do back up files and settings.

Choose the "let me choose" option. You can actually pick and choose individual directories and files to back up. The aim here is not to back up everything - just choose your individual documents you care about, and your mail file. On my system I store all my personal documents and files in a LISADATA directory to keep them organized. I definitely recommend doing something like that on your system, with subdirectories in there if necessary. That way you can back up that one area and know you've gotten everything important.

Now you have to choose where to save this backup information. Make sure you store it on a DIFFERENT drive. That is, if you are backing up data from your C drive, do not put the backup file onto the C drive. Otherwise if your C drive crashes you lose both your original data and your backup file too. It's very cheap to buy a plug-in external drive to use for backups.

Move on to the final screen. Go into Advanced. First, tell it this is a normal backup. Next, have it do a verify so that you can be sure the backup worked properly. Choose to append to the existing one - that way you don't lose the previous backup.

Then you can say "later". This lets you set a schedule of daily, weekly, monthly at a certain time. I highly recommend at LEAST weekly backups if not daily backups. With weekly, the most you can lose at any time is a full week's worth of work. That is certainly going to be stressful enough!

We don't have a Mac to test this, but here is what the Apple site says about backing up your Mac -

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Hi! I followed the directions for Windows XP and didn't find Backup in the System Tools folder. I tried to just copy "My Documents" to my external drive but that only created a shortcut. Does anyone have any advice?

Many thanks!
Leah

Leah - the first thing to do is to make sure you have your Windows XP fully updated. If you go into Start - All Programs, up at the very top of the list should be a "Windows Update" link. Make sure you're all updated.

Then once you've done that, go into Start - control panel, and into the add/remove programs area. There should be an option there to work with Windows components. Make sure the backup component is checked (it probably isn't). You might poke around in there and see what else you want to enable, there are lots of nifty Windows components that are very useful. That will then get backup running on your system!

In terms of copying the file, when you drag and drop an item, hold down the CONTROL button while you're doing it. That will force the item to copy.

Good luck!

If you don't have a "backup" icon:

The first thing to do is to make sure you have your Windows XP fully updated. If you go into Start - All Programs, up at the very top of the list should be a "Windows Update" link. Make sure you're all updated.

Then once you've done that, go into Start - control panel, and into the add/remove programs area. There should be an option there to work with Windows components. Make sure the backup component is checked (it probably isn't). You might poke around in there and see what else you want to enable, there are lots of nifty Windows components that are very useful. That will then get backup running on your system!

Okay, i will have to set aside to time to learn to do this. Thanks for the XP info!

I would say most people don't know how to back up their computers. Most people aren't computer savvy. My IT husband constantly has to recover data from failed hard drives and it's often the case that all the data can't be recovered. Important University research data goes bye bye all the time as well as dissertations.

I'm somewhat as bad. I back up what I'm working on currently on CD's every now and then. My biggest mistake I make is thinking my little USB memory stick can hold back up data forever! So I save to the hard drive and back up to the USB memory stick and I've done that for about 9 months now. Woops.

I was told that Windows XP does not come with backup by the Dell techs and my tech who fixed my PC when it crashed.

We have several XP systems in the house and they all have backup as a standard Windows icon - so maybe it's only the Dell specific version that they removed backup from because they want you to rely on their services? Odd!

Setting up a backup plan takes literally 10 minutes at the most - and it can save you MONTHS of work!!

In fact right on the Microsoft site here is an article explaining how to use the Microsoft XP Backup Utility

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Where was this piece of info when my PC was crashing (just before final death) Dell techs didn't seem to know this. Can you color me upset. I lost so many files and photos....irreplacable. I should sue them. I have since bought a back up device and it is so simple to use. Just plug it in and it does the work on its own. Now that's my kinda software. (for dummies)

Hi Friends,
I am new here and I am happy that I can find a lot of userful information on the forum. I also have pc realeted website and I hope it will be good for everyone here)))

Hi My husband helped me install an online backup solution on my laptop. There are many now that are both affordable, simple and automatic. I use www.kabooza.com which has a benefit that I can log into my account at work and look at the picures of my children and even send copies of them to family and friends.. But there are several others. Don't lose all your photos like I did with our first son. I don't know what i will tell him when he gets older... Be Safe!

Lisa, welcome to the forum, we hope you enjoy your stay
Rosie

Is there a safe, reliable site upon which I can store files from my hard drive while I reformatt? CD's take too long and for some reason they aren't working right.

I copy my files to an external hard drive. I haven't figured out how to do an automatic back up of these files so that anything changed or new only would be backed up. Do you know how to do it?

I have VISTA. The software that came with my hard drive does not work with VISTA and since the initial changeover I have not looked for drivers.

Angie - Vista comes with software built into it. Did you try the Vista backup utilities?

I just wanted to remind everyone it's time for their monthly backup! Find some way - any way - to get your important files backed up. You never know when a hard drive is about to fail!

Even if you copy your most important files onto a CD, it's better than nothing!

My computer is a year and a half old but there's something wrong that I've not taken time to get repaired. It started Thanksgiving and will lock up when a certain thing tries to download an update. I've gotten it worked around for the most part so that I'm not having problems, but I really became worried about losing things I would regret and didn't have backed up.

I do have an external hard drive I also used for back-up, and I use my laptop for back-up, but still I'm not the best about simply doing it. A little over a month ago I went to an online back-up system which has my entire computer backed up. The first 2 gb are free, but I was way over that so I had to use the purchased version since I didn't want to simply say which files back up (such as my document files). I pay 4.95 per month and have it set to back up at 2:00 A.M. every day. It's with an online place called Mozy.

I'd not wanted to go with an online system simply becaue I didn't like my whole computer out in cyberville but finally changed my mind. So far I've been pleased. And when I was reminded by a writing agent that the businesses that got themselves up and running again the the quickest after 9/11 were the ones who had an online back-up system, that convinced me.

Oh definitely I highly agree that EVERYONE should back up their files. I've heard from families who lost all their photos since they were all digital! Can you imagine losing all your photos??

External drives are great, but those can fail too. I definitely recommend having a local external drive for easy-to-get-to backups, but also once a month store stuff off onto DVD. That way it's non-crashable.

I even recommend every year or so moving a set of DVDs somewhere else. Anywhere else. A friend's house. A relative's house. That way if your house burns down, you have at least some backup of data somewhere.

The key though is not to worry about giant problems if you haven't even backed up yet. Just start small. Start today with just your most important files. If your hard drive went down today, what would you miss the most? Just drag and drop those onto a DVD. Even that much is better than nothing!

Then we can help automate it

I had a scare with my photos. My computer crashed and I was told it couldn't be fixed. I got the "black screen of death". I had pics from about 5 years of vacations, etc on there.

My husband had backed my computer up about 8 months before the crash but I had some very precious pics on there. My husband was able to get some sort of program to fix the computer and I immediately put all my photos to CD, plus sent them to COSTCO, to my account there.

Now I back up my computer every month and I would make a special back up if I put some vacation photos or something on it.

I am a firm believer in frequent back-ups, too. My laptop was stolen a few months ago and I lost several months worth of photos, plus an ebook I was writing for a client (due 3 days later, had to restart from scratch) plus screenplays I had written, my deepest-secret-thoughts in my diary for 15 years, ebooks and other downloadable files I had paid for and my kids' homeschool transcripts/records. Needless to say I was FREAKED OUT.

Now I backup on an external drive every few weeks or so, and I use my web hosting server (unlimited storage) to keep my important work files that change daily, plus family photo archives dating back to 1993. If you choose this method, be sure to protect the directory so you don't find the pages indexed by search engines!

I think it's really cool, Lisa, that you're making a point of helping editors learn this valuable lesson. You never know how important it is until you've lost everything.

That does sound scary HealthyMom! It's part of why I have travelogue pages on my personal website where I have all my trip photos. I figure even if my home system does crash and all my backups burn, that the website (which is hosted in North Carolina) will still have those trip photos. Still, that's not really a solution that everybody wants to do!

I'm busy backing up all my files as I type

FROM what i have read my windows XP home edition DOES not have the capabilities to back up so that is why i have lost everything several times when something gets corrupted i do a recovery from disc that i purchased from HP and start all over I upgraded my pc memory myself but i have yet to understand backing up stuff to an external harddrive??

YEs lisa i was going to suggest this ..I have a yahoo, a hotmail, and a gmail account important documents i mail to myself and place them in folders in the seperate emails according to biz personal ect one account for each ..smiles of course pics you can scan and send to yourself too but after a while can use a lot of mail allowence if not unlimited another note on this is that outlook express unless it is set a certain way DOES NOT SAVE MAIL in the event of a crash so use yahoo gmail hotmail ect ..smiles

Yoakum - whatever you were reading was wrong The XP install discs definitely DO have backup software on them. The question is whether you chose to install that option or not. If you chose not to install it for whatever reason, simply stick those discs back into your computer and choose to install that option!

Backing up to an external hard drive is VERY easy. Heck, you can do it manually if you want. Let's start with that. What drive letter is your external hard drive?

Yoakum - I would definitely save your mail messages as backups but I'd never rely on external mail programs like Yahoo for saving your important documents. Yahoo is notorious for being broken into all the time. I wouldn't trust anything important in a free package like that. I'd suggest deleting those mail messages quickly and writing those files to a DVD, that is at home, safe and permanent.

If you've never written a DVD let us know and we'll help out with it.

They will stay there forever, I guess in case I need them. Also, I got an external hard drive to back up at least monthly. [url=BellaOnline ALERT: For anti-spam reasons, we restrict the number of URLs allowed in a given post. You have exceeded our maximum number of URLs.

I bought my computer used and unfortunately do not have the disks to add the backup utility of XP for my laptop =(

I copy My Documents and the files on my desktop to an external hard drive. I wish I could figure out an easy way to schedule this and copy only the updated and new files. As a result I do a complete copy of these files and then delete an older back up. Do you have any recommendations on how to do this better? Unfortunately, I don't do it as often as I should.