Backing things up regularly can save a lot of anguish

The meltdown was caused by a faulty fan in the computer’s power supply which overheated and eventually caught fire, killing the whole machine stone-dead. With hindsight, I suppose the heroic use of my car’s fire extinguisher on the machine’s innards probably didn’t help either, but that is another story.

The point is that over the past few years, an increasing number of my customers and friends have lost vital - often critical - data because their computers failed without warning or their friendly local computer shop reformatted a hard-drive without stopping to think that the family photos stored on the machine in question may indeed be of some value to someone.

Data-loss is a real concern. It even happened to me when I lost a hard drive to the local heat because I switched off the air conditioning when I left my office.

So… Please take it from me in all seriousness when I say that important data should be backed up at least once a week.

If you’re running Windows XP™, the simplest way to back up your data is to copy the contents of your ‘My Documents’ folder to an external device [a USB memory stick or hard drive]. Don’t simply copy your data to another folder on your machine, as it will be lost with everything else if your computer fails.

Once  your memory stick or hard drive has been plugged into your machine, simply follow these steps:

Open the ‘My Documents’ folder on your machine. Once this has opened, hold the ‘Ctrl’ key and press ‘A’, followed by ‘C’. Open ‘My Computer’ and double-click on the icon representing your external device. In the window which pops up, once again hold the ‘Ctrl’ key and then press ‘V’. All data from your ‘My Documents’ folder will now be copied to your external device.

After things have been copied, simply unplug the external unit and store it in a safe place, well away from your computer. Ta-da! Your data is safe!

Two more things… Since a short article like this is not exactly large enough to explain the backing up process properly, I will provide full instructions on backing things up on this site in the near future. Secondly, if you’re buying a USB Memory Stick or Hard Drive, have a word with InkChain; it’s where my equipment always comes from. I say this not because I’m on some sort of commission, but because it’s actually the best place I’ve found in or around Larnaca.