How to Save Yourself Before Your Computer Crashes

Save Yourself Before Your Computer Crashes

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The best way to retrieve your data after a computer crash is to save it all before anything catastrophic happens. A solid and redundant backup plan will ensure you don't lose a thing (or lose as little as possible) when your computer decides to kick the bucket. Here are some basic steps to keep your data safe. This article will teach you how to perform these steps manually, although there are some programs available do to the majority of your backup activities automatically.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

Computer
External hard drive (at least 100GB, more is always better)
Several recordable CDs or DVDs
CD/DVD folder or other media storage
CD/DVD-safe permanent marker or labels
An online storage account (See Resources)

Step1

Pick a day of the week to perform your backup activities. Set aside about a half hour to backup your computer.

Step2

Identify the data you want to back up. This may include work documents, photos, music and the like.

Step3

Create a folder on your external storage device or hard drive and label it with the date and "Backup." For example "04152007Backup".

Step4

Copy all the important folders you identified in Step 2 over to this folder on your external hard drive.

Step5

Insert a recordable CD or DVD into your computer's disk drive.

Step6

Using your favorite disk burning program, burn the folders you identified in Step 2 to the CDs or DVDs using the "Create Data Disk" or similar feature of your program.

Step7

Label the CD or DVD with the date and "Backup" using a label or a CD/DVD-safe permanent marker and store in your CD/DVD folder or other media storage.

Step8

Step9

Back up all the folders you identified in Step 2 to your online storage site.

Step10

Do this weekly.

Tips & Warnings

The key is redundancy--making multiple copies of your backup and keeping them in different places. That way if one backup fails, you have at least one or two others that you can rely on.
Most users will benefit from a weekly backup schedule. Power users may benefit from a more frequent schedule. This is where an automatic backup program will come in very handy.
Your external storage device or hard drive may have come with "one-click backup" software. Learn it and use it.
Online storage sites may have their own backup programs as well. Learn and use these, too.
If you have your own server space, you can back up your files there as well.
Music takes up a lot of space, so you may only want to back up the music you've purchased online and leave the ones you also have on CD out of the backup process.