Backing Up Your System
One of the major issues people have trouble with is backing up files. Most people have little or no organizational structure, and application settings may be spread all over the hard drive. If you're lucky enough to be running Linux, the solution is one simple command:
tar -cvzf myfiles.tgz *However, most people are still on Windows, and backing up can be a trial. This tutorial will attempt to provide a clear demonstration of what needs to be done, as well as pitfalls to avoid. The first step is deciding what needs to be done. Your music collection, for example, might be available on the original CD's, and therefore you might not want to use valuable space making copies. If you don't really care about keeping your application settings, that will also simplify things immensely. If you want to know exactly what you had installed or loaded, you may need to make a list in notepad and save that with your backups. Once you've got something of a game plan together, you need to decide how you're going to backup your files. You might have a big external hard drive, in which case you don't have to worry too much about space. Maybe you have a DVD burner, in which case you'll need to organize your files into chunks of 5Gb or less. If you're using CD's, even more splitting will be necessary! No matter what you decide to do, make sure that your backups are clearly timestamped. Now that those two decisions have been made, we can get to work. First we need to organize all these files into a reasonable directory tree. Start by running CCleaner to clear off files that you don't want, and then set to work organizing. Get all of your personal files and documents into My Documents, being sure to find folders you added under C:\ or your desktop. My Documents will hold all original files, and we'll make a new folder to hold the new, organized ones. Always copy files instead of moving them, unless you are very space-constrained. Obviously your files are your own, and therefore your organizational structure will be unique, but I will offer some guidelines. Start by making a folder on your desktop called Root. This will contain the folders that we'll copy to the DVD or external hard drive. Under Root, add several generic subfolders, such as Pictures, Documents, Music, Application Settings, Email, Old Backups, etc. You probably also want to divide those folders into subfolders of their own. Make sure you have a well-fleshed-out structure before copying any files. Now you're pretty prepared for backing up your files. You have two major steps ahead of you: organizing your personal files, and locating your email and application settings. We'll start on the first step, which may take you several hours if your files aren't already organized. If you see a problem with your folder structure or you need to divide it even further, don't hesitate to do so. The goal here is that you'll easily be able to find files on your backups, and DVD's are often too slow to use traditional search tools effectively. Keep at it until all your files are copied. It'll take a long time, and a lot of perseverance. Music helps pass the time. Once you've done that, we're onto the second big step. This one isn't nearly as daunting as the last one, and if you only have a few applications to back up, will take less than half and hour. If you want a list of the programs you have installed, go into your Control Panel and select Add/Remove Programs. Copy that list into notepad, and save the resulting file in your Root folder. If you are in Windows 2000 or XP, you will be able to find your application settings easily. Go into Windows Explorer, and enter %APPDATA% in the address bar. Under Tools->Options, make sure that you can see hidden files. Look at all the folders in this folder. Most you will be able to recognize as programs or companies that you use. Copy the ones you want to keep into your Application Settings folder in your backup. One very important folder will be that of your email program. This contains all your messages, and you need to back it up in order to keep them. Once you've finished this step, create a file in Application Settings called APPDATA, so you know where you got the folders from (when restoring your backups). If you are using an older version of Windows, your program settings are probably not in one centralized place. The simplest way to deal with this is to enter Program Files in your C drive, and copy over the entire program folders. For email, you probably want to search the Internet for a backup tutorial specific to your program: best not to leave that kind of thing to chance. Once you are done, create a file called PROGFILES, in the same manner XP users did for APPDATA. Once you've finished that, you are done creating the backup. The next step is either very difficult or very simple: transferring the backup to a new medium. If you have a external hard drive, simply copy the Root folder to that drive, renaming it Backup_15Jan2007, changing the date accordingly. If you're using DVD's or CD's, you'll need to move specific folders to different discs to avoid running out of space. Grab a marker and label all of these clearly with names such as "Backup Pictures Jan 15/07". When you've finally done that, you're finished! You may wish to keep the organizational structure you made for the backup, in which case you should transfer everything in the Root folder to My Documents. If you copied everything as you should have, you can simply delete everything in My Documents before doing so. There's always risk in deleting files, though, so be careful! Backing up all your files in this manner at least once a month is good practice, and protects against disasters such as viruses, hard drive crashes, or theft. Always keep your old backups; if you lose the new ones, it's better to have them than nothing. Good luck!
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