If you have ever lost an important file, you can imagine
how painful it would be to loose all your important files. That
is exactly what could happen if files become corrupted or your
hard drive fails. It is therefore imperative that we backup important
files that we save to our hard drive.
If we put the files that we create or save in My Documents,
then we need only backup My Documents to another media periodically.
Saving the files and folders in My Documents to a writeable CD
or DVD disk can be accomplished with a "burner" program
or to CDs with Windows Explorer. Annother alternative is to back
up folders and files to a USB drive.
Windows XP Pro has a Backup Program in the System Tools group
for backing up folders and files. The same program exists for
Windows XP Home, but it is not normally installed. (Users of
XP Home Edition can install the program from the Windows CD:
Look for it in the valueadd\msft\ntbackup folder, right-click
the Ntbackup file, and choose Install.)
The are a number of free and fee based backup programs that
are useful for backing up your folders and files. And as noted
in the "Backing up to the Internet" article in these
Technical Notes, one can upload to Internet storage services.
A user-friendly and free program that makes backing up very
easy is called LeBackup. The free version is called LeBackup
Light. To download this program click here
and then click on the download site. Save the downloaded file
to your hard drive in a folder you can find later. The file is
compressed (ZIP) file which will expand when you click on it
in the saved folder. Save the expanded files to a folder and
then click on the Setup.exe file to install the program.
Once the program is installed, start it and click on the
Add button to create a backup routine. Follow the on-screen instructions
to specify the Destination (which device to save the folders
and files to) and the Source (My Documents for example) for the
folders and files.
LeBackup Light lets the user select a full backup or an incremental
backup. If you are backing up your folders and files to a new
disk (CD or DVD) you will want to check the box to do a full
backup. If you are backing up to a device that you have backed
up before, you do not have to check the full backup up box and
LeBackup Light will do an incremental backup (will only backup
new or modified files and folders).
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