Steps to Prevent Critical Data Loss (Part II of II)
Step 5: Replace your hard drive
Most hard drive manufacturers only warranty their hard drives for one year. For most brand-name desktop computers, you should try to replace your hard drive every 24 months. Replacing your hard drive might sound like a major upgrade but with common disk-cloning software available, moving your entire Windows setup and all programs isn’t very difficult any more. Take advantage of reinstalling your operating system on the new hard drive and rest assured you are starting with a fresh drive and no problems.
Step 6: Store your data in one folder, or use sub-folders
By this point, you already know that backups are important and you know you should be doing it – but you have data all over the place, right? Try spending a few minutes and move all your data to one location. Then you can create shortcuts to these locations from your desktop.
Step 7: Archive your data every 12 months
If your backups continue to grow in size, you may want to archive data that you aren’t using. Create a folder called “Archive” that lives outside the normal backup folder and move any data that you don’t use into this folder. You should burn this data onto two separate CD’s; one for your on-site use and the other should go to an off-site location. When the CD’s have been successfully burned and checked, you can empty the Archive folder and start over.
Step 8: Save your Outlook Express email
An item that is usually forgotten from the backup plan is Outlook Express email. By default, there are two types of files you need to backup – the first is .WAB (this is the Windows Address Book) and the other is .DBX (this is where all of your email lives – be careful, for every sub-folder you create, there will be a corresponding DBX file). In Outlook Express, click on Tools, Options, Maintenance – you can change the location of your DBX files to be placed inside of your single backup folder.
