PROBLEMS WILL HAPPEN - Your Hard Drive will fail, Your power supply can fail (which can take your motherboard with it) , Your CPU can fail under certain circumstances. ALL OF WHICH can only be repaired by time and money.
(If your HD is good, it still might require a windows repair to move to new box - new MB new CPU, etc.)
http://www.novastor.com/tech_supt/why_backup.html
Is a website that shows the cost of "downtime" (the period between when a computer stops working and before it is working again) for businesses.
It is broken down by time (hours and days) and cost ($ lost while computers are down - NOT COUNTING cost of repairs)
In Firefox, click on bookmarks, then click on Manage bookmarks. In the new Bookmark Manager window, click on File and select EXPORT.
Now your only choice is where in the world you are going to save the file. Actually where on your hard drive is the most accurate. My recommendation is the good old My Documents folder.
In Internet Explorer (at least in 6.0) click on File and Import and Export. This starts the Import/Export wizard.
Click Next, click Export Favorites, click next, click next, and make sure the Export to a File box is checked and ends in \My Documents\bookmark.htm
UNLESS you use BOTH Firefox AND Internet Explorer and have already done the first step (backing up Firefox bookmarks). In that case, you may want to rename it to something like IE favorites.htm.
NOW COMES THE COOL PART.Open my documents and double click on this new file you have created (bookmarks.htm). Isn't this cool? Without knowing any HTML or programing, you have just created your own customized webpage. This is on your local hard drive and should always come up very quickly. Some people choose to make this page their default start page (or home page) since it has all the places you regularly go. (If it doesn't, then add more bookmarks and do this again!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ #2 Data & documentsYou are an organized person and all your personal data is in folders under the My Documents folder (perhaps even including your email)
Now you just need to backup that folder (and all sub folders)
If it will fit, then your solution could be just putting in a blank CD and using your computer's CD burning software (ie Nero, Roxio, NTI backup)
just follow your instructions and add the My Documents folder to the CD .
Even easier, just plug your flash drive into a USB port and when you open Windows Explorer (Windows key + E) you will see a new "hard drive" with it's own letter.
#3 If you have another computer in your house on your network - you COULD use it as a file server - Copy data to a folder on remote computer
On the other computer create a backup folder called "backup" and right mouse
click on it and SHARE it over the network. Make sure you "allow users to change files"
See this graphic >>>>>>>>
#4 automate process
Microsoft Powertoys includes an automatic backup feature.
email
My Docs
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MS Powertoys
Microsoft Powertoys
Then there is the option built in to WINDOWS XP
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you REALLY want to make sure you never lose anything, it would be best to backup your WHOLE hard drive - Windows, all your progams and all your settings. There are many ways to do this, but all of them are more expensive than the previous options. #5 USB backup drives - These drives are usually larger than your existing HD and come with software to back up on a schedule. In the business world these are what replaced Tape backups from days of old. Firewire drives go even faster, but it typically can take 8 hours or more to do a complete backup of your drive. One disadvantage of the old tape backup process was restoration (the process of restoring the backed up data. If you only wanted the latest copy of your financial data from Quicken a tape would force you to overwrite your whole hard drive with the backup. The problem was 2 fold. Time - up to 8 hours again and then you would lose anything you did on your computer since the last backup was made. Here's where USB drives have an advantage. You can drag and drop just the file you want to restore in seconds. USB is even easier than CDs because unless you have formated your CDRW or even DVDRW correctly, you would restore a file that was "Read Only" and you would have to do one more step to use the data and add to it again. (All this really means is that you Right mouse click on the file once it is back on your hard drive, select Properties and uncheck the Read Only box. This can be a pain to remember to do for each file recovered from a normal CD or DVD which is why some people really don't like to restore from them) #6 Secondary hard drives. Perhaps the most simple would be to buy another hard drive.
This solution is perfect if you are a little geeky and don't mind getting your hands dirty. Particularly if you are not afraid to open your computer case and dig around inside. The idea is to install the secondary HD in your computer and then purchase and install ghosting software. Norton Ghost is one such program that can make an exact duplicate of your original hard drive. One setting does this automatically at what ever interval you select. Once a week, even nightly. This may take awhile depending on the size of your original hard drive. The BEST NEWS is that if your original HD fails, you are only a minute or two away from being backup and running. Depending on the settings you choose, you might even chose to be able to see the 2nd drive at all times. This means if you didn't really mean to delete that file - just click on the backup drive and folder to drag it back again. INSTANT recovery. There is a world of software available for all these solutions - even Linux solutions that I have used that are free. ONE WARNING ABOUT CLONING - make sure you know the size of your original drive. TRY to chose a backup drive that is larger or at the very least - not the same size. This will become very clear when you have a choice to clone and you can't tell which is the original and which is the copy. and even FREE HD Cloning software http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml CORPORATE backup strategies Every company with a computer has to have a backup plan of some kind, if they want to stay in business.
It looks something like this:
M-F backup documents to a flash drive or DVD-RW
Weekly Clone of the hard drive including the operating system. Another solution in the business world is the use of dedicated computers just for backup and storage.
Backup servers - (machines on the network dedicated to backing up in the background) http://www.planetmagpie.com/itconsulting/midmarket-backup.aspx