PC Hacks

Hack #100. Do Your Backups

Admittedly, backing up your datafiles is not the coolest thing you could be doing with your PC. Backups rank right up there with cleaning out the rain gutters, giving the cat a bath, calling your ISP for support, and having a root canal. That said, spending an hour or so setting up the right backup process and then launching it manually or letting it run at a scheduled time will be a blessing sometime in the future.

Depending on the method and software you choose, your first backup may be a whopper—but the subsequent ones, incremental or differential backups, may take very little time or trouble.

Windows provides its own limited backup program—sending files off to diskettes, tape drives, or other logical drives, including network drives. Apparently the developers of Windows XP had not counted on using the included backup program with CD-ROMs as a media of choice to hold the backup files. At least you can back up to a network drive on a file server.

More versatile programs such as Stomp's BackUp MyPC (http://www.stompinc.com) and Newtech Infosystems NTI Backup Now! (http://www.ntius.com) support placing backups on CD and DVD media as well as tape drives and other logical disk drives. BackUp MyPC's wizard and scheduler are as simple as can be to get you going, and after your first backup, it's almost a set-and-forget process—just make sure you leave your PC on and have writable media ready to accept the data.

You can also back up with disk imaging/cloning ...