Yes, now is a good time to consider
making that backup of your important files and data. None of us
relish the thought of having to do anything twice, however computers
make it easy for us to make numerous copies of our important data
or projects, but mostly it is something we only consider after we
have experienced a loss. Hours of work can be lost in a fraction
of a second, so back it up !
There are many options available
for backing up. Most of us are familiar with floppys, and they are
ideal for backing up small amounts of data, and easy to transfer
to other computers as floppy drives are common to all computers
at present, but beware manufactures have already decided to phase
out the 1.44MB floppy drive, and no defacto standard has emerged
to replace it.
So what should we back up ? Everything
! Where should we put it ? Modern hard drives are normally formatted
to contain one partition, the familiar "C" drive, but
can be split into multiple partitions, "C" "D"
E" etc., each drive behaving as a separate drive accessed by
its own drive letter, the advantages of this are numerous.
Partitions can be formatted separately
i.e. wiped clean of all data, we can backup the entire contents
of the "C" drive as an image to another partition, which
can then be restored quickly and easily should reinstallation be
necessary. All important data can be backed up to this "backup"
partition on a regular basis. I can write a program to do this for
you so that backing up is simply one click of the mouse.
All computers I build or reinstall
are set up in this way. But don't wait until disaster has struck,
I can perform this service now on your computer.
Now that we have everything backed
up safely on the hard drive we can relax, NO, hard drives can and
do fail, so important data and files need to be stored as hard copies
on removable media i.e. zip disk, CD-ROM, DVD-RW etc.
DVD-RW drives overcome the storage
limitations of floppy drives and CD-RW, being available as internal
or external drives with capacities of over 4.5 GB, and are as easy
to use. Fine for personal backups but not so easy for transfer of
data to other computers.
My personal choice for hard copy
backups is DVD-RW, they are now an affordable solution and can store
data on dvdrs that cost from as little as 45p, compatibility with
other computers is universal as DVD-RW drives are now a standard
component.
Another good solution is an external
hard drive, now available up to 500 GB.
If you require any assistance with
backing up your data, please contact me on 02920 407930.
Ref. Reinstallation
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