Fast, Easy Backups
For Win98 / ME / NT / 2K / XP
Copyright © 1997-2005 Fred Langa/ Langa Consulting LLC. All worldwide rights reserved.
4) ORGANIZE YOUR HARD DRIVE
Imagine you went to your local library, and instead of finding all the books on the shelves, you found them in a giant pile in the middle of the main room. The book you want might well be there; it might even be properly entered into the card catalog. But finding it would involve extra work that could have been avoided if the books were organized.
Now consider: I get a lot of mail from people who say something like “I have a 60GB [or 40GB or 20GB or whatever] hard drive, and it’s full of files. How on earth can I back that up?” This is exactly the same problem as the library with all the books on the floor, just in a different guise. In that unorganized library, while it’s possible to find the books you want, it’s needlessly hard to do so. Likewise, in an unorganized hard drive with tens or dozens of megabytes of files and folders all dumped into (say) the C: drive or partition, it’s very hard to manage the files and to make reasonable backup sets. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Libraries are useful because the books are broken down into sections and subsections. Different libraries use different methods of organization, but there’s always some rational pattern to the way things are laid out: A number system, a subject index, alphabetic sorting by author or title--- there’s some system that gathers similar books into one part of the library, where you can find them, fast.
Now think of your hard drive: You probably have some files and folders that are valuable, but that essentially never change. For example, if you have a collection of old legal records, or MP3 files, or old software, or photo albums and the like; these files may need only to be backed up once, and then never touched again.
You probably have another set of files--- some system and application files, for example--- that change, but infrequently. If a file doesn’t change much, it doesn’t need to be backed up very often. In fact, it only needs to be backed up after it’s changed, and then can be left alone until it changes again.
Another class of files changes from time to time, but irregularly: Think, for example, of something like tax files, which go into high flux at tax times, and then may otherwise lie dormant for long periods.
Still other files--- email, daily reports, schedule information, etc--- may change every day, or multiple times a day.
All those file types have differing backup needs.
And then there are some files that don’t need to be backed up at all: For example, you may have some files you just don’t care much about--- if you were to lose them, it wouldn’t matter much. This may be because they’re easily replaced with a fresh download or reload, or because of low intrinsic value.
If all these many different kinds of files and folders, with their varying needs for backup, are all tossed together onto (say) your C: drive, you’re like that library with all the books in a pile. Yes, you can do backups, but it will be an unpleasant and needlessly difficult task.
Next: TRADITIONAL BACKUPS
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