Backing up is easy to do

Back up your data. When your computer breaks, it is difficult if not impossible to recreate email, documents, spreadsheets, photos, music and other files. External hard drives or DVD writers are inexpensive today so there is no reason other than sloth for not backing up this precious information regularly. I identify below three free programs for backup and a tool for changing the directory where you store your data.

Windows has long had the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard tool to move documents and settings from an old computer to a new computer. You can find it by navigating to Start - All Programs - Accessories - Systems Tools.

It is easy to use. It is designed to migrate data from an old computer to a new one. It can also serve as a backup tool. Once you complete the simple interview, it searches your computer and compresses your information into a single, large file in the location you specified in the interview. It is a brute force back up. It puts everything into the backup, even files that have not changed since the last backup so although it is easy to use it lacks finesse.

SyncToy is another free Microsoft tool for backing up data. You need to download it, since it does not come with Windows. Once installed it is easy to use.

SyncToy synchronizes information between two directory trees or sides. These trees can be on the same or different drives. Clearly, using two drives is preferable for backup to putting all your eggs in one basket or drive. You can select from five actions.

Synchronize
Echo
Subscribe
Contribute
Combine

Synchronize is the most elementary. It copies data in both directions between the two sides. Renamed files and deleted files are also passed both ways. The descriptions for the other four actions are clearly defined in the program so I will not do that here.

My favorite free backup toy is Karen’s Replicator which has many more features than either of the two utilities above. It easily allows you to schedule the backups. It provides for filters so that certain types of files will not be included in the backup. It provides good feedback on what happened during the backup so you know if any file was not backed up, perhaps because it was open at the time of the backup.

Windows XP stores most of your data in the My Documents directory on the C-drive. If the computer breaks for a non-hard drive cause, it is difficult to access the drive from another computer due to technical reasons. I recommend that you move My Documents to a second internal or external hard drive. This way when catastrophe strikes it is easy to take your data and use it on another computer. Get Microsoft’s TweakUI utility to change the default location for documents.

Once it is running, navigate to the My Computer-Special Folders branch of the tree panel.
Select the My Documents folder from the dropdown list on the right side.
Click the Change Location button.
Select a location on the other hard drive and click OK.

Windows uses the new location as the default. You may need to migrate documents from the old directory. Use one of the utilities above to complete the change.

Outlook and Outlook Express do not use the My Documents directory to store their data files. To learn how to deal with these two applications see my RHFtech Help Desk tip at:
http://rhftech.com/tips.html#OutlookAndOutlookExpressBackUP
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