Backing Up Ain't Hard to Do: A 10-second Guide

WHY.  Software becomes corrupt. Operating systems crash. Hardware fails. Nature acts up. Crimes occur. And people make errors. The work you did last week, yesterday, a few minutes ago may be irretrievably lost.

BY THE MINUTE.  Most software includes a provision for automatic saving at regular intervals. Look in the Options or Preferences or Settings menu, and tell yours to save every 10-15 minutes. If you have the choice, also select regular automatic backups with a different file name.

If your software won't save automatically, set a timer to remind you to do it manually. Outlook -- not Outlook Express -- has one built-in, you can get a free Countdown Timer from Karen's Power Tools, set a timer on your digital watch, or borrow an eggtimer from the kitchen.

BY THE HOUR.  If you're working on a project that will take hours or days to complete, save your work at the end of each session with a new name, e.g. project050604.doc. For important or hard-to-duplicate work, do it several times a day.

BY THE DAY.  At the end of the day, copy your work product to another location on your hard drive (good), to another hard drive (better), to another workstation (best). To do this, it helps to save your work consistently in one central folder (like My Documents) organized into sub-folders by project (My Documents\Fieldstone Corp). Hate manual copying? Use readily available software, like Karen's Replicator (free) to do it automatically. Don't forget to back up your email, too. Check the Help file to find out what to back up.

BY THE WEEK.  At least once a week, copy your work product to floppy disks, Zip disks, a tape or external hard drive, or to CDs -- to something that can be stored outside your workplace. On the road? Save a copy of your work online. Yahoo! offers 30MB of storage for free, more for a fee. It's the Yahoo! Briefcase.

NEED HELP? Call (914-328-6152) or write for help designing a backup system you can live with.

Don't put it off!