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Backing Up Files
Tom Kosmal wrote that he's moved all his photos to an external hard drive, and asks if he has to copy them all back to his computer's hard drive before copying them to an additional external drive. No. With USB connectivity Tom can simply plug the second external drive into his PC, whereupon he can drag and drop the photos from the first external drive to the second. Click on Start>Computer (or My Computer) to see all the drives located inside and connected to your PC. By the way, Tom is very wise for making such an additional backup. All hard drives are destined to fail (sooner or later) and having double backups of your important files can be a life-saver. Furthermore, beyond using one's own hardware, photos can be saved free of charge on sites such as Flickr.com and PhotoBucket.com. You can even attach photos to Gmail messages you send to yourself. Google keeps copies on its servers at no charge to subscribers. Which Hard Drive to Buy Speaking of external drives, Kerry Keener asked which one we would recommend, and would she need to buy "backup software" to use with the drive. Well, there are many brands of drives, and weI don't have resources for buying and testing them. Before buying anything, we always check the reviews on PCMag.com and CNet.com. There you can find reviews by professional technicians as well as by users who have bought and used the equipment. What Kind of Backup Software? Regarding "backup software," there are various issues to consider: Enterprises often want software that backs up everything on a computer's hard drive from one moment to the next so that no applications or data would be lost in case of a sudden hardware failure. Most home PC users, however, just want to have backups of their important documents, knowing that programs can always be reinstalled from their original CDs or downloads. External drives can come with varying types of backup software. One of our Maxtors, for instance, came with Retrospect, a program designed to duplicate the internal hard drive of the PC to which it is attached, in case of a crash. However, this does not mean that the replicated hard drive could be copied properly to another computer. In any case, we just use this Maxtor to backup personal files, and copy them to one or more of our other PCs as needed. In recent years the storage capacity of external HDs has gone way up, while their prices have gone way done. We usually buy ours from Amazon.com. Backing up data is essential to having a relatively stress-free computer experience; however, the term has more than one meaning. Someone writing a book, for instance, doesn't want to lose even a paragraph of a manuscript in the works. Yet a stolen laptop could mean an only copy is gone forever – or a fire could destroy a computer and any print-outs that exist. How I Protect a Work in Progress: I normally use Microsoft Word (any version except 2007) and go to Tools>Options>Save, where I choose "Always Create a Backup Copy" and "Save AutoRecover Info Every 10 Minutes." While typing, I periodically click File>Save As and give the document an incrementally updated name, such as MyStory-01.doc, MyStory-02.doc, MyStory-03.doc, etc. This gives me progressively backed up copies on the same computer. Then I periodically copy everything to an external hard drive and/or a flash drive. Finally, I mail copies to myself via Gmail, where Google gives me virtually unlimited storage space. |
Senior Computer Tutor
Don Edrington
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Senior Computer Tutor
Don Edrington
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