Backing Up Your Computer Data

Hi JanS

You should have other folders in the Jan folder. That way you can backup by one or more folders. Trying to do a ton of data at once is pretty slow.

Also if you have a lot of images in the folder there may be one or more "ThumbNail files" which could eat space. You do not need them.

If you are on an XP Windows machine go to the control panel and open the folder options. On View under advanced settings locate the entry "Do not cache thumbnails" and make sure there is a checkmark in the box next to it. Also a little further down make sure the "Show hidden files and folders" has a dot in the circle next to it.

You will have to manually delete all the Thumbnail files, but no new ones should be created.

As far as hidden files and folders you may have files you are not seeing. A friend had that scenario and there were a ton of files, especially if you are using MS Office and working with documents or spreadsheets in that folder, or folders.

In general one should not put very much, if anything, in the C: root. If you are XP you should put your folders in the MyDocuments folder.

Jerry B

Guess I'm the odd man out here since I have used flash drives or thumb drives for backups for over a decade. Having used hundreds of these I have only had one fail and that was due to a coffee bath .

Whatever method you decide on is only as good as your ability to maintain CURRENT backups. You have to make it a habit.

I have 6 1TB external HD's for all my images family pics and general info. but still use carbonite and rely on good old pen & paper. haha

I back up all my crap on external drives.. that's good enough for me.

You are evidently experienced in their use,
I think where most newbies come unstuck,
is when they transfer or copy a program onto their
thumb drive, then attempt to run the program from it.
Instant disaster.

Not these days Rod. There are what are called portable apps which run from removable devices such as USB sticks.
Very useful as you can obviously carry them around with you but also they help to prevent 'clutter' which eventually slows down your PC.

OK, what I am talking about,
someone gives you a thumb drive with say
an excel sheet of Catalogue numbers for Camels on Stamps.

You find the sheet on the thumbdrive, and open the excel sheet,
does that not trash the stick?

No that works fine Rod. The spreadsheet or any other data file should open fine as long as you have an app installed to support it.
Here we have the case of differentiating between apps and data.
Do you really need to back up the app or could you simply reinstall it? The data is the important part.

I should have clarified that you were correct in it would be a disaster to copy over an installed app any try to run it if it wasn't designed to do that.

Hmmm, I was thinking both, data and app, Anthony.

As I understood it, when you opened a file
installed on a stick, it opens fine, and you can work on it,
when you attempt to then close the file, the app attempts to save
certain data on the thumb drive, thereby causing it to lock,
and only a reformat fixes it.

I learnt that by opening a file of MSWorks years ago.
Things may have changed since then.

G'Day Rodney




It should not trash the "stick". If it did your favorite MP3 Player, or digital camera, would be a worthless.

I do not know your technical background but here is an article that helps explain how they work:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/flash-memory.htm

The actual electronics behind all this gets involved but in theory is relatively simple.

MicroSoft Office programs have been known to "trash" a file if the file resided on a removable storeage medium. It has always been recommended to copy the file to the hard drive to work on it. Maybe that is why, in your example, it seems to "trash the usb stick".

Jerry B

Hi I_Love_Stamps



Are they all connected to the computer at one time? If so, doesn't your work surface get a little crowded?

Jerry B

Rod, Did you also have the MSWorks application installed on the stick\drive?
An application sprays data all over a drive in Windows. There are the program specific files, shared libraries, user specific files and registry entries to consider.
This is why we have to define the split between Applications (C:\ Program files on Windows usually) and Data (C:\Documents and settings on Windows usually).
So unless you are able to install a full backup of your PC from nothing - a bare metal restore. It makes sense to keep an archive of your application installation disks or files and backup the data only.
There are many backup methodologies and no one solution is best for everyone.

Check out http://www.portableapps.com/ for apps that have been specially modified to work without installation (sometimes also called standalone).

Anthony, no, only the file.
I used to belong to the MSWorks NG for years,
I maintained a 4 million record database
in the flat file MSWorks format for my work.

IIRC at one stage it was common request from people using
their thumb drives to open MSWorks files, sent to them,
and consequently losing all their data, and having to re format.

Possibly, the thumb drives at that time were low capacity,
but they couldn't handle MSWorks subsidiary files
when exiting.


For my personal backups, I have for years just kept all my data
under one folder, it makes backup a piece of cake through "Copy"

Inside that folder I have all the installation disks
of every program I use constantly, looking at the file now
that only consists of just 21 programs, other than the windows disks.

Now I only skimmed the posts.. But I use a 2Tb HDD for backup storage.

If any of your harddrives fails, it's usually not a big problem for a company to access the data stored in it and transfer it to a new harddrive if you turn it in. Ofcourse it's a fee and you'd need a new harddrive.. Still I've only had 1 harddrive-failure, and I have about 6-10 Harddrives.

Problem is when you backup to CDs/DVDs, HDDs, USBs.. you most of the time keep these backups in the same room or house.. in case of e.g a fire.. these backups would still be quite useless. I don't think most people have time to run around in a smokey house to find your CDs/DVDs or HDDs when there's a fire, or that it's even on your mind.

There are many internet-based backups available with a monthly fee. You can setup a specific time/date and which files to backup, and it'll update your backup automatically. DropBox is quite similar.. However this depends on how much data you have to backup.

Hi Tomten




Unless one uses the online backup facilities you still have the problem that backups and data are in the same location. Putting backups on an external hard drive works because 2 drives failing at the same time would probably never happen. However, there is the major catastrophe event.

Using CD or DVD backup affords a sense of portability. One could always store the backup, or a copy, "off site". If I had any critical data, such as family photos, I would keep the backup CD(s)in my safe deposit box.

Jerry B