A friend of mine loved his computer like his own child. He dusted it every day and maintained it meticulously. He stored all his family pictures of great sentimental value on his PC along with videos of his parents and friends. He would listen to his favourite songs on his PC every evening after getting back from work. Then one day the music died.

His PC’s hard disk had crashed. There was no warning or sign of the impending disaster. My friend went everywhere possible to try and recover his lost memories. He finally found a company which offered to recover his data, for several tens of thousands of rupees. He couldn’t afford it and was distraught for months on end. He had done every thing right. His only sin was that he had never backed up his data.

Whether you are a new or experienced computer user you should be aware of the importance and the need for back up. Without backup you can lose your data any time from virus, power failure or a hard disk problem. In extreme cases, it has put companies out of business. PCs are becoming more and more reliable. This creates a false sense of security — we begin to think all our data are safe and secure. It isn’t true. Backups are really a necessity, and you are responsible for making them.

The most important folder on your PC is My Documents. Most Windows programs, including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, save their files by default in this folder. There are other subfolders such as My Pictures, My Music, My Videos and My Received files there. If you use an iPod all your songs, pictures and videos are stored in the iTunes folder inside My Music. So you can well imagine how important this folder is. Many people save their files on the desktop. Your mail client like Outlook and your browser’s Favourites or Bookmarks are also saved in a different location. In Windows XP they are all saved under C:\Document and Settings\user name. So always keep a backup of everything under C:\Document and Settings/user name.

Windows Backup

How do you backup your data and where do you keep them? You could use Windows own Backup utility and an external hard disk to make a backup. The Backup utility helps create a copy of the information on your hard disk. If the original data on your hard disk is accidentally erased or overwritten, or becomes inaccessible, you can use this copy to restore your lost or damaged data. To start go to Start—Programs—Accessories—System Tools, and then click on Backup. You can also use the Automated System Recovery Wizard in the Backup utility to help you repair your system.

Free backup utilities

There are free hard disk and partition imaging software that take a snapshot of your hard disk so that you can restore your system at a later time to the exact state the system was when you imaged the disk or partition. This is useful in case of a hard disk disaster. The term “image” is used because such software often copy the state of the hard disk sector by sector.

Macrium Reflect Free is one such software. It is able to image your system to another external hard disk, a USB or Firewire drive, and DVD. It has a built-in scheduler, so you can schedule it to back up your system at a convenient time.

Norton Ghost

One of the best backup utilities is Norton Ghost. It captures your entire hard disk into a single image file and you can restore everything on your PC when things go bad. New incremental image creation and image viewer make it a decent option for restoring a single file or a folder as well. Norton Ghost version 14 costs around $69 (about Rs 3,347). It is available at www.symantec.com.

Time Capsule

For Mac users Time Capsule is the best backup option. It is a wireless hard drive that comes in 500 GB and 1 TB and costs Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000, respectively. It is also a fully featured WiFi base station.

Send in your computer-related problems to askdoss@abpmail.com. The solutions will appear soon.