About Technology

Backup Your Computer Files or Start Over

Written by oneself on 2:27 PM

When was the last time you backed up your computer data? How many files and folders do you have on your computer? A rough guess will do. Personally I have over 85GB of data, music, Photoshop files and emails that I desperately would not want to lose.

Backing up your data files on Windows is a simple and straight forward process that you should complete on a regular basis. I should know as a while back I didn't follow my own advice and lost all my files when one of my hard disks became corrupted.

I had to re-install Windows XP and re-download all the programs I could remember having. I also had to buy a couple of software programs again as the drive that failed had all my emails on it, so I couldn't prove I had purchased the software.

Windows has a built in back up facility that is adequate. It's not exactly the best program out there, however it will allow you to back up your data for free. To access it Click Start, highlight All Programs, highlight Accessories, highlight System Tools, and then click Backup to start the wizard.

Within the wizard you will be asked exactly what files you wish to back up and to where. What files you back up will help you make a decision on where you wish to back up.

If you wish to back up only really critical files that are not that huge you may be able to back up onto a flash drive or memory stick. These are getting cheaper and cheaper and 8GB or 16GB versions are very cost effective these days.

If you wish to back up more files, or even all of your files then you may be best using a portable hard drive. Portable hard drives offer offline storage and as long as you store it away from your computer [no point storing it in the same room or building really], offer a good worthwhile solution.

Portable hard drives are very similar to flash drives in that the price is very reasonable and if you are serious about keeping the data on your computer redundant, then it is cost effective, especially if you do have a computer or hard drive failure.

There are quite a few alternative free backup software options available, that for a home user will be more than sufficient. There are paid for back up programs also that are available, they maybe would be better suited to businesses that require more powerful and scalable

Another option is for online storage. There are many free online storage options available as well as paid. If you can afford it, paid for online storage is best as you should be given guarantees by the online storage merchant.

However you back up your data and what medium you keep it backed up on, having a regular back up schedule and keeping to it will give you piece of mind and will safe you hassle further down the line when one of your computer components fail.

John French has over 15 years experience of building and repairing computers. He has extensive knowledge of keeping computers healthy and free from spyware and malware.

Want to discover more tips and secrets that can speed up and protect your computer for free? Then check out his online blog at http://www.john-french.net

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Regular PC Maintenance can Solve Many Problems

Written by oneself on 4:32 AM

by: Gareth Barrow

Regular PC maintenance is just as important as cleaning out your garage or going to gym. No one wants to put the effort into properly maintaining his or her garage or his or her computer. Even though it is an oxymoron, you have to think of your computer like an electronic organism. It needs food and needs to be properly cleaned in order to run as you would like it to. just The nice thing about most regular PC maintenance is that you can auto-run most tasks so you don’t have to remember to handle them.

Keeping a Copy

The most important thing for you to do in the course of regular PC maintenance is to back up your files. This should be done on a daily basis. Imagine if your computer crashed, and you lost all your files. Without a back up, you have little to no chance of retrieving them.

With Windows XP, it is easy to back up most of your vital files during regular PC maintenance. Pretty much everything is located inside of ‘C:/Documents and Settings’ folder. That means that all you have to do is zip that folder and burn it onto a disc for safekeeping. Of course, you can buy a program that will do this for you, thus eliminating your need for this particular task in regular PC maintenance.

Scanning Procedures

Next, you should do habitual scans and updates as part of your regular PC maintenance. Doing this once a week is the best. If you don’t already have an anti-virus program, go out and get one before you start regular PC maintenance. Without one, you are vulnerable to system crashing viruses. So go get one before you experience that hassle!

Naturally, your anti-virus program is useless if you don’t update it. Usually you can set it to scan and update automatically without any effort from you whatsoever. Of course, you should also update your Windows software fairly often as part of your regular PC maintenance. This will help to keep your Windows operating system running smoothly. It also fixes any previous bugs and glitches that are inherent in most programs. Regular Windows updates also helps to fill any holes that your firewall and anti-virus software may have.

Internal Cleaning

Once a month, as part of your regular PC maintenance, you should do a run disk clean up and disk defragmenter. Doing so will help keep your PC running smoothly and quickly. Best of all, it’s not very difficult. All you have to do is click on a couple of things and leave your machine to work while you sleep or do some errands. Who knew regular PC maintenance could be so easy?

To do either of these, you must first stop any programs running in the background. Things like instant messengers or download managers will prohibit the scanners from doing what they need to do. Once those are closed, the next step to this piece of regular PC maintenance is to go into ‘My Computer’ and right click on your C:/ drive. Then go to ‘Properties’ and in the new window, click on the ‘Tools’ tab. There are the two programs you need to use: Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragment. It is advisable to run Disk Cleanup first. This will determine if there are any bad sectors on your hard disk. Don’t be surprised if there are. Over time, your hardware can age and things like this happen. When the scan disk is finished, do a disk defragment. A disk defragment will consolidate all your fragmented files and keep your PC running fast, which may speed up the regular PC maintenance process.

Registry Cleaning

Another thing you should as part of your regular PC maintenance is to scan and back up, fairly recurrently, your Windows registry. The registry is a database of files that log certain preferences within programs and from multiple users. You want to keep your registry happy and healthy through regular PC maintenance. You can buy software that scans and automatically makes a back up copy for you so that you will be covered should you ever encounter a crash. Do some research so you can find one that suits you. If you are better with computers, then you can probably do it by yourself. Be careful, though, because you can really screw it up during your regular PC maintenance.

Hopefully now you can see just how regular PC maintenance can solve many problems. It isn’t that difficult for the most part. It is time consuming, but it is also incredibly important. Try and get yourself in a regular PC maintenance routine to help make it easier for you.

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Backups for Business: RAID

Written by oneself on 5:01 PM

Intel Matrix Storage RAID can be an important part of a multifaceted approach to protecting your business data.

Richard Morochove

There are two types of businesses: those which have experienced the gut-wrenching loss of valuable computer data, and those which will.

Unfortunately, not all businesses take adequate precautions to protect their operations from data loss. According to a recent Office Depot publication on disaster preparation strategies for small businesses, 20 percent of them do not back up their data. The study states that a company that cannot access its business data for longer than 48 hours is unlikely to fully recover from the outage.

Home Backups not Suitable

A weekly or monthly data backup may be entirely adequate for a home PC, but it falls short when it comes to protecting business data. While a home user may be inconvenienced by losing a few days' worth of e-mail messages and having to wait three or four days for a PC to return from the repair depot, a business will suffer more severe financial consequences.

If a business has no way of entering customer sales orders, issuing invoices, or managing its operations without access to its computer data, any outage that lasts more than a few hours will deliver a blow to the bottom line. How can you protect your business from this loss without spending a fortune?

The Perfect Data Backup

A perfect data protection technique should back up data speedily, conveniently, automatically, and at a reasonable cost. It should safeguard against all reasonably possible causes of data loss, from the failure of a single hard drive to a fire that destroys the office and the computers within it.

A RAID (redundant array of inexpensive, or independent, disks) setup can back up data quickly, in the blink of an eye. But RAID doesn't protect against accidental deletion of data, nor does it safeguard against a disaster that destroys an entire computer, such as a flood.

Daily backups to a tape drive or to an external hard drive provide some protection against accidental deletion of data. However, this technique backs up less frequently and requires more time to complete--sometimes several hours--than RAID. Also, it still doesn't help if a disaster destroys your building.

Periodic rotation and transport of backup tapes or external hard drives to offsite storage will protect against theft or destruction of the premises. But physical shuffling of storage media is neither convenient nor automatic.

Internet-based systems that transmit backups to remote data centers are convenient and can be configured to operate automatically. However, if your business has dozens of gigabytes of important data, a full backup can take days to complete, even over a broadband Internet connection. Monthly service fees can be pricey.

Combining Backup Techniques

If there's no one perfect data backup technique, do you just throw up your hands and hope a disaster will never strike?

Not at all. You can build a good data backup system by using more than one technique. This belt-and-suspenders approach to data protection relies on the strengths of one backup technique to offset the weaknesses of another.

Implementing multiple backup techniques will cost more than using just one. However, the value of your business data will almost certainly justify the additional cost.

Fast, Affordable RAID

I'll be addressing different backup options in more detail over several columns. But for immediate and constantly renewed data backup I can think of nothing better than using a RAID array of hard drives to store both data and important programs on your server or PC.

RAID is less expensive and easier to set up than ever. Until recently, you needed to purchase a special card to set up a hardware-based RAID array. In addition, migrating to a RAID array from an existing hard drive involved a not-insignificant risk of data loss.

Now, many new PCs come with a drive controller with RAID capabilities, whether or not it is advertised. Computer makers don't often undersell and over-deliver in this way, but I believe some do so in this case because they are concerned about the cost of supporting RAID migrations.

Intel Matrix Storage

Intel's hardware-based implementation of RAID works with recent versions of Microsoft Windows including 2003 Server, XP, and Vista. A number of popular hard drive controllers made by the chip-making giant support the technology.

To implement Intel's RAID, you must install at least one additional hard drive and load Intel Matrix Storage Console management software, which you can download for free from Intel's Web site. The site lists the supported drive controllers and includes complete installation instructions.

Fault-Tolerant RAID

A comprehensive discussion of all RAID options is beyond the scope of this column. But make sure to select a method that offers fault tolerance through data redundancy, such as RAID 1 (often called mirroring), RAID 5, or RAID 10. RAID 0, sometimes called data striping, provides no safeguards for your data; rather, it's intended to improve performance.

Implementing RAID 1 requires adding an additional hard drive of equal or greater storage capacity than the drive you already have on the PC or the server you wish to back up. If you have one 250GB hard drive, for example, you'll need to install another with at least 250GB capacity. These days, such drives are relatively inexpensive (see our latest top 10 internal hard drives chart).

Intel's Matrix Storage Console makes it easy to migrate from a standard single hard drive to a RAID 1 array with two hard drives, within 3 hours. Data on the existing hard drive is preserved. You can continue to use the PC during the RAID migration, though operations will be slower until the process is complete.

RAID 1 can noticeably improve data-retrieval performance for dual-core PCs, since information can be retrieved from either mirrored hard drive. There is no significant improvement when saving data, however. The only RAID migration drawback I have noticed is that you may need to reregister some apps, such as Adobe's Creative Suite.

When a Good Hard Drive Goes Bad

If one hard drive crashes in a fault-tolerant RAID setup, its data is safely stored on the other hard drive(s) in the array. It's a simple matter to restore normal operations.

Recently my computer froze after one hard drive failed in a RAID 1 array. Rebooting the computer required more time than usual, almost 15 minutes. However, the second hard drive took over and the computer operated normally, with no evidence of data loss.

To restore the data protection offered by RAID, I needed to install another hard drive to replace the failed device.

RAID Rocks

Performance-wise, it's hard to beat the ability to return to normal computer operations after a hard drive failure in just 15 minutes. My added cost for RAID protection was about $100 for the second hard drive and cables.

I will discuss complementary backup techniques that offset RAID's weaknesses in a future column.

Richard Morochove is an IT consultant and writer. Send him questions about using technology in your small to mid-sized business via e-mail. PC World may edit your query and cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered.

source:www.pcworld.com

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