Windows Explorer TipReasons for Backing Up Your Documents and Photos.It insures that you will have them in the event of a computer failure or other disaster, such as, fire, flood, or tornado. The more likely scenario is a hard drive failure, a destructive virus, or someone stealing your computer. It does not take much time to write your important files to a CD, and then store the CD at a relative's house or in a safe deposit box. With irreplaceable digital photos on our computers, it has become a necessity to routinely backup these precious life memories. Since digital photos are normally large files, you will need a CD or DVD burner for your backups. The best way to prepare for doing backups is to keep your files and folders well organized. Windows has already set up some standard folders, such as, My Documents, My Pictures, and My Music. Under My Documents, you can further organize your files by creating subfolders, such as, My Word Docs, My Spreadsheets, Scanned Documents, and My Recipes. See my photo organization tip for creating subfolders under My Pictures. If you scatter your files all over your hard drive, there is a greater chance that you will forget where they are and even worse, forget to back them up. I encourage my clients to use web based email primarily because their email files are backed up for them by the email provider. If they should have a computer failure, they can easily use someone else's computer to retrieve their email. |
