Keep your data backups safe and fast

PC World - Someday, you will lose an important file that you haven't backed up. Many users continue to play Russian roulette with their valuable information and digital creations, but you don't have to. These simple instructions will help you develop a backup regimen that suits your needs.

Back Up a Little or a Lot

In Windows XP and 2000, you need to back up only your C:\Documents and Settings folder (or whichever folder you've set as your default). Forgo a grandiose backup routine in favor of a plan that you know you will perform regularly, or one that's easy to automate via the tips in that Answer Line column.

Make at least one extra copy of all your business, tax, and other financial records; important text documents and e-mail messages; and photos and video you've transferred from your digital cameras.

A complete system backup, such as a disk image, will help you recover quickly from a drive failure or other catastrophe, but it adds the expense of a second hard drive (or potentially extensive disc swapping if you use your optical drive). The best time to create a drive image is immediately after you reinstall Windows and get your applications running again. An image containing a patched copy of Windows and all your favorite programs configured the way you want them is a very useful thing to have at hand.

Nevertheless, you may get by just fine with backing up only your data files and folders. Though it takes time, you can reinstall operating systems and applications from their original discs, and Windows may even run better after you reload it.

Partition for Safety

By default, Windows and most of your applications dump the files you create into your My Documents folder. My Documents separates photos, music, video, and other types of files and keeps them all in one spot for easy copying, but unfortunately it resides in the Windows boot partition--the most vulnerable and crowded place on your hard drive.


Creating a new partition for your data makes backup easier and safer because you avoid overwriting the files when you reinstall Windows. Here's one possible approach: Use your C: drive for your operating system; then create a new partition (named your D: drive) for your applications, another partition (your E: drive) for your business and/or financial data, and yet another partition (your F: drive) for image, sound, and video files.

Symantec's $70 Partition Magic 8 and Acronis's $50 Disk Director Suite make it simple to create new hard-drive partitions and resize