What If You Suddenly Lost All Your Computer Files?

You save all your work notes, unfinished articles, images and other related files on your computer with the expectation that they will always be there for you.

You may even do much of your business on your computer and save important details on your hard drive.

But what if the unexpected happens? Will you be able to recover from a lose of data?

Even if you don't have a disc crash, you may make a mistake and delete files you later realized you needed. Or the worst thing happens, you turn on your computer one day to discover it won’t boot.

There are ways to get deleted files back. And there are even programs that can scan a crashed drive and sometimes restore a few working sectors. But both of these may only rescue pieces of your data. Not entire files.

If you write online articles, even your published work can be lost, along with the images that you uploaded. The site you published on may be hacked or they might go out of business and along with that all your work is suddenly no longer available.

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The solution that will let you sleep at night is to backup your data. You need to make a data backup policy that you will stick to. Make a plan of backing up your data at the end of each workday. All files that you may ever need to recreate your work should be saved in duplicate somewhere other than your computer's hard drive.

The easiest way to maintain a duplicate backup of everything is to use an external hard drive. Technology today has brought the prices of the drives down to very affordable levels.

And they are huge, with definitely enough storage space to copy everything with a simple copy command or "drag and drop." There is no need for complicated software to backup and restore.

That's what I do. And it came in handy already for me, more than once. There were times when I messed up something I was working on and I just needed to set the hands of time back a few days.

All I had to do was restore a backup of the file that I screwed up and use the version from a few days earlier. I had it on my external hard drive so it was a non-event. I restored the backup and continued on with my work.

Backup Files to the Cloud, Flash Drive, or External Hard Drive

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Saving a duplicate of your work on another device is very important, especially if you are serious about your work as a money making venture.

There are Internet sites that offer services to backup your data files to their server so you always have access to it. You store your data in the cloud. You are really storing your data on a computer server somewhere. That's what cloud computing is all about.

I don’t trust online backup. In my opinion I think it’s too easy for them to get hacked. There are often stories on the news about computer servers of companies and government agencies being compromised by cyber attacks.

So what is a safer solution? An external device that you can attach to your computer.

Flash memory plugs into a USB port and functions as a hard drive.

Flash drives are good for text files. But if you backup a lot of images too then they may fill up your flash memory before you know it.

Nevertheless, it's a good way to take care of your backup at really low cost if you don't have huge files.

External hard drives are the best solution when you have large amounts of data, especially images.

Just like flash memory cards, external drives are plug-and-play, connect with ease to a USB port, and are easy to use.

Either way, it's as simple as copying your files to another drive letter from your C: drive.

Think of all the time and effort you put into all your work on your computer. You definitely don't want to lose that, do you?

It's important to back up everything. All your work files, all your notes, and all the images and pictures that you have. You need it all so that you can recreate everything in case your computer dies.

A flash drive may not hold it all. An external hard drive holds 30 to 100 times more data than a standard flash drive.

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It's not expensive to have a really good external hard drive. Amazon sells external hard drives made by Western Digital, Cirago, Toshiba, and others. They range in sizes from 120 GB up to 2 Terabytes.

All are available at reasonable prices and Amazon includes free shipping. These High-Speed External Hard Drives connect to your USB port just as easily as those little flash drives.

Most external drives take advantage of the high speed of USB 3.0 ports, but they say they work with USB 2.0 also. I have proof from my own experience that at least the WD Passport 500GB drive works on the older USB 1.0 port. And I don't find speed to be a problem.

The 500 GB drives are not much more expensive than the 120 GB drives. So why even consider anything less. You can back up everything. In addition to your articles, you can back up your music, your photos and your videos in the same quick process. These are all data files that require a lot of space and 500 GB will go a long way to save all your data.

These drives are all about the size of a smart phone. Get one of these drives and make a habit of backing up each day before you shut off your computer. You'll sleep easier knowing that everything will be there in the morning.

Plug-N-Play

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External drives are plug-n-play, which means your computer will recognize it when you plug it into your USB port. There's nothing else to do. Some drive manufacturers include a software CD and others have it on the drive itself. You can also download from their websites.

But I recommend not using their software. If you read the commends people make on Amazon you will usually find negative commends about the software. I personally just use the drive as any other drive. You can copy files and entire directories just by dragging and dropping. Anyway, the software just adds another resource hog that slows down your computer.

Flash Drive Alternatives

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Available on Amazon

For smaller backups, you can use a flash drive. But as I mentioned, if you have a lot of pictures, consider a larger external drive.

How To Copy Files to a Flash Drive or an External Hard Drive

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There are many ways to copy your files. If you work on Windows, you can drag individual files or complete folders between two windows. Or you can do it from a single window. You can even use a DOS command. I'll explain all three methods.

Assuming you have all your files under "My Documents" or in individual folders under "My Documents" we will backup the entire folder to be sure we get everything you need for later recovery of your writing. This will not back up the system files. We are just concentrating on saving your work.

Send To Destination:

1. Click "Start"
2. Click “My Documents”.
3. Right-click the folder in your “My Documents” that you want to backup.
4. Right click and select “Send To”
5. Select the flash drive or external hard drive letter. It may show as "Removable Drive"
6. Wait for it to finish copying.

If this is not the first time you are backing up, it will ask you to confirm that you want to overwrite the prior files on the destination. There is nothing wrong with doing that. Windows does not have an option to backup only new or modified files.

Drag and Drop Between Two Windows:

1. Click "Start"
2. Click “My Documents” and a window will open.
3. Click the folder you want to backup.
4. Now click "Start" again.
5. Click "My Computer" and another window will open.
6. Click the drive letter for the external drive
7. Resize and position the two windows side by side.
8. Highlight the files, folder or folders in the source window that you want to copy to the external drive.
9. Drag them over to the other window where you have the external drive.
10. The files will all copy and display the results as it's progressing.

DOS XCOPY:

I personally prefer to use XCOPY in a DOS batch command because XCOPY allows you to backup only modified files. This speeds up the process. If you don't know what DOS is, don't worry. Be happy you are still young.

DOS was the first operating system Microsoft used prior to Windows. It used line commands such as XCOPY. Here is how you can use XCOPY to backup all files in your "My Documents" folder. If you are using Windows, click "Start" and then "Run" and enter "CMD" to run the DOS command processor. Then enter the following command...

xcopy "c:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents" "g:" /s /d /y /I

This will copy all files and folders under "My Documents" to drive G, which in this case is the external drive. If your external drive is not G: then use the correct drive letter.

The letters after slashes are control parameters...

• /s means to include all subdirectories
• /d limits it only those files newer than destination.
• /y means to overwrite files on the external drive without asking.
• /I assumes destination is a directory if copying more than one file.

You made it to the end. That shows you're serious about protecting yourself from losing your important work files. Now all you need to do is make a decision to have a daily backup routine. Someday you'll be glad you did.

Copyright © 2011 Glenn Stok

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