(Quick Summary of the first two articles) If the content of the first two articles in this series have caught your attention and you are actively applying them to your particular situation, you are reasonably safe from online villains. Not totally safe, but about as safe as it is possible to be without making security the primary focus of your computer activity. (If security does become your primary focus, disconnect from the internet. There must be something useful you can do with your home computer that does not require internet connectivity. After all, civilization existed and thrived prior the internet. Indeed, they tell me, it thrived prior to the development of the personal computer.)

In spite of all the care we take Fate, in the form of Murphy's Law, will step in. Murphy's Law states that if it can happen, it will. It also states that if there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then. It is inevitable! Computers crash! Programs lock up! Operating systems fail to function normally! Hardware fails! Data is Lost!

Fortunately it is a simple fact that about ninety percent (90%) of these problems can be cured with a simple reboot of the computer. The only data lost is that done since the last save. (What? You've been working for hours and haven't saved! Too bad, it's all gone!)

This brings us to the first law of backup.

Backup your memory! The content of ram memory is most fragile. As soon as you start a project create a file by saving, even if the only data in it is a blank page. As you progress save often. This way you will never lose more work than you accomplished since your last save. Most people learn to do this very quickly after their first crash. If you have more than one program active save before switching between them.

Second law of backup.

Backup your data files on some regular basis. How often you backup depends on how important the data is to you (i.e. how much would you hurt if you lost it). If you have large amounts of unchanging data (pictures, music, etc.), I suggest you move (or delete) them from the folders you actively backup. It will greatly speedup the backup process and there is no point to repetitively backing up the same data.

Third law of backup.
Do a complete system backup. You can get a lot of argument about needing a complete system backup. After all, you have all your program and operating system disks (don't you?). You can always reinstall them from scratch. I think these arguments come primarily from people who have never needed to do the job. Those who have need to get back on line quickly after a major crash recognize the need. I use a drive image program (Norton's Ghost program) and create my images on a hard drive. Essentially this gives me a restore image (like the restore disk that comes with many computers). This allows me to restore the computer to the condition it was in when I made the image. It takes me less than 30 minutes to make and check the image and I can restore it to the computer in less than that. If the problem was a failed hard disk, I can restore to a new hard disk and automatically adjust to a different disk size. Think about it. I could create an image every day (I don't) and it would actually be quicker to restore the image than it would be to troubleshoot the cause of the problem.
Backup seems to be the lost child of computing for the home user. Almost no one does it. The excuses are legion and none of them are valid. It usually takes a major disaster to wake us up. Be different. Set up a backup procedure suitable to your need and implement it. The only really good backup is the one you never need. The one you have when you need it is a thing of joy.

CAG