Backing Up Data

Backing up data (or the lack there of) seems to be a pretty big problem among college students, or just PC users in general. My most recent computer, the Gateway, tanked on me a few weeks ago. After some tinkering, I diagnosed it as a hard drive problem, and prayed I didn’t lose my data. Luckily, it was recoverable. However, not all that much was on the line because of my back ups.

Admittedly, I do not back up as often as a should. However, I do back up more than most. And I get a lot of, “What should I do to back up my stuff?” Honestly, backing up is just copying your documents somewhere else. Having a second copy of them. There are procedures you can do; but a simply copy and paste somewhere, like a CD or flash drive, will do the trick for the important stuff. I use an external hard drive.

With an external, you can theoretically copy your entire hard drive. The way I have things set up (or should anyway), when I first got the hard drive I manually copied all of my documents to it. I also set up Norton Ghost to copy my hard drive exactly to the external. I scheduled my PC to do this weekly. Right now, I am also looking for a program that will sync files between the two drives. That way I don’t have to worry about over writing documents or losing any data.

Setting that up will seem like a lot of work at first, but if you’re like me, it is well worth it. Later!