Back up |
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by Alan Proctor |
Yes, you should back data up. "What for," you ask? "I always save my files," you say. Well, what if the hard drive crashes. I know, I know, you're thinking "well, what if I get into a car wreck, stuff happens."
True, but most people at least wear a seat belt these days, and air bags are getting more and more popular. Get my drift?
Think about it. You have just spent two weeks day and night working on a proposal that will grant your company enough money to financially float for two years. All the correspondence, number crunching spreadsheets, and raw database information is saved on the hard drive. The day before the proposal is due, a "bad sector reading drive C" error occurs when you boot up the PC. Is there a backup? OK, maybe that example is too extreme, not general enough. Let's say you're a secretary, and the entire morning has been spent preparing a memo which includes budget and other important information. Let's say the memo is due by five p.m. to the VP and your boss wants it finished ASAP after she reviews it during lunch. Let's say you try to bring up the document from drive A to complete the memo and "error, error reading drive A, cannot find file" appears on the screen. Is there a backup? Let's say probably not, and you should hope your resume isn't on that same disk.
Enough said.
Backing up data on a PC is analogous to wearing a seat belt, brushing and flossing one's teeth, and getting a car tuned up and oil changed. Prevention is the key. Sure, nothing may ever happen: you're a perfect driver, have perfect teeth, and the car is new. However, being safe is always better than being sorry; "what if" situations loom all around us.
OK, I am going to assume you're convinced. The next questions should be what, when, where, and how.
Basically, there are three types of data to back up: configuration files, data files, and program files. The configuration files are the most important files to have backed up: autoexec.bat, config.sys, command.com, and the .INI and .GRP files (Windows). The easiest way to keep an emergency copy of these files is to copy them to a boot disk. That way, if anything should get changed, deleted, or mutilated (i.e., corrupt), the PC can be reset from the boot disk. However, the "most important" files to you are the ones that must be done over if they are lost or destroyed.
A great way to protect against data loss on a hard drive is to know where the data is in the first place. It is surprising how many people lose information just because they do not even know where they keep it. For simplicity, make one directory on your hard drivenamed datawith several subdirectories that represent the type of data, e.g., wpdata (Word Perfect), 123 data (Lotus), hgdata (Harvard Graphics), etc. There are several ways to back up data files to diskettes. The best way is determined by preference and data quantity. For a few files, use DOS's copy command. If they all will not fit on one diskette, use a compression program. DOS's backup, PKZIP, Symantec's Norton Backup, or DS Backup are just a few. Which will work best depends on the nature and amount of data, and preference for the program (user friendly, etc.). Of course, for program files, the best backup (unless you find installing software from diskettes enjoyable) is a tape drive.
Having a tape backup drive is advantageous because should the hard drive crash and need to be either reformatted or replaced, all the configuration files, data files, and program files are restored exactly as they were from the last backup. The down side is the expense, and having an additional disk drive in your PC (compatibility problems, space problems, etc.). The only other backup method for program files is the original diskettes. So, if spending most of a weekend to reload all the software on a 540MB hard drive is acceptable, the original program diskettes work fine.
While we're on the subject of time, I want to cook up one last morsel to chew on. Many PC users claim time deficiencies when it comes to regular file maintenance on their PC (like making backups. Think of it this way--the 30 minutes to an hour spent backing up data once a week (or whatever time increment deemed best) is a small price to pay for the hours of headaches, lost work, time (which is money), and angry bosses that you could put up with. As the saying goes: back up, and back up often.
Alan Proctor is a HAL-PC member.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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