Digital Trends

No matter how good the components in your computer are, sooner or later you will have a major failure on your hands. Unfortunately it's usually after such an event that people start thinking that they should have backed up their data. 

We place our lives on these machines. They are essential tools for education, entertainment, and daily communications and we spend much of our time in front of them. No matter how much time you spend with your computer, make no mistake about it - these machines do not care. They can and will betray you and can and will come crashing down at the most inopportune of times. 

In the business world, preparing for this inevitable event is called disaster recovery or DR. While the practice of having spare machines may work for large companies, most of us have to resurrect the machine we have. The key to surviving a major crash is something that sounds quite simple but its importance cannot be over emphasized. This key to disaster recovery is planning. 

In this guide we'll try to get you to face this inevitability and be prepared for the worse case scenario. 

Since most computers are running some form of the Microsoft operating system and since this is the environment most people know the best, this article will be restricted to so called WinTel machines. 

It's All About the Data

The most important part of your computer is your data. You can usually restore the operating system with a CD that comes with your machine but all the files you have collected or created over time represents the effort you have put into your computer and the reason for having it.

Backup your data as often as possible. After every major session on your machine make a backup. You don't have to backup the whole hard drive. Identify the directories that hold your important data and back only them up. Instead of just hitting ‘Save' to store your work use ‘Save As' and make a note of the location the program is using to write your data. Add that directory to your backup list. Yes, this is going to take a bit of time but consider the time it will take to recreate everything from scratch. Consider your time valuable, it is. The cost of a professional service to get data off a crashed hard drive is not only very expensive - in the thousands of dollars - but there is no guarantee that everything you want can be restored.