How to back up your computer

Backing up manually is the cheapest and easiest method if you don’t use your computer very often.

However, you’ll have to perform the backups regularly; about once a week.

And, if other family members use the PC with a separate user account, remember to back up their My Documents folders too.

If you use a PC to store all your photos and music, as well as valuable documents you should probably consider something a little more thorough than an occasional manual backup.

The most important thing here is to make backup copies of anything that you couldn’t do without as soon as possible after they arrive on your PC.

So, for example, if you transfer a fresh batch of photos from your digital camera to your computer, try to make sure that these get backed up before you wipe the originals off your camera’s memory card.

The same goes for music you have purchased and downloaded from online music stores. Some music download services, such as Play will allow you to re-download tracks that you have purchased for nothing if you lose them, but others may not, which could potentially turn a hard disk failure into an extremely costly headache.

We heartily recommend backing up every day if you copy, save, edit or create a lot of personal files. But with lots of files and folders requiring more frequent backup, manual methods become much harder to implement. As such, busy PC users may require a bit of help in the form of a specialised backup utility.

Backup tools
Regrettably, Windows XP doesn’t have a built-in backup feature by default, although it’s fairly simple to add. If you have access to the original XP installation disc, pop the CD in your drive, open My Computer, right-click on the CD-Rom icon and select Explore from the menu. Now go to the Valueadd folder, followed by msft and then ntbackup; double-click Ntbackup.msi to install the Backup utility.

If you don’t have the Windows disc, you can download the Windows XP backup tool free here. Entering this address into your browser’s Address Bar will automatically start the download, so don’t be concerned by warnings that you are downloading an executable file ­ when the download is complete, double-click the resulting file (‘ntbackup’) to install the Windows Backup utility.

With the utility installed, you can find it by going to Start and selecting Programs, followed by Accessories, then to System Tools and finally Backup. It’s a pretty basic tool, so you may want to consider looking elsewhere (see below).

Windows Vista users are better catered for; Vista Home Premium comes with a fairly decent, easy-to-use utility for backing up and restoring files and folders (go to Start, then Control Panel, and select ‘Backup your computer’), while Vista Ultimate goes even further. It comes with its own disk image backup utility, which as we’ll see later on, can be very useful for preserving peace of mind.

There are lots of alternative backup products available, so don’t feel you have to stick with what Microsoft serves up. Most backup software can be divided into two types: file-and-folder backup utilities, which enable you to specify files and folders to be copied to a set location; and hard disk imaging software, which takes a ‘snapshot’ of all the data on a specified hard disk, thereby saving a copy of everything.

Good file and folder tools allow you to set a daily, weekly or monthly schedule and automatically perform the backup for you at the allotted time. Three of the backup utilities you’ll find on our website will do just that and, even better, Genie Backup Manager 7 Lite, Cobian Backup 9 and East-Tec Backup 2007 are all free.

All three applications are flexible and easy to use, allowing backup copies to be made to a variety of different locations, such as an external hard disk, CD or DVD, USB memory key or network hard disk. Each has its own advantages; Cobian Backup 9 and East-Tec Backup 2007, for example, both include the ability to backup to remote FTP locations as well, should you wish to store data in a different location for safekeeping. They’re all free, so try them out for yourself to see which one you like best.