Backing Up Your Data
Devlan Nocera
You work hard on your documents every day, creating, revising, and re-revising, striving for perfection. What would you do if you lost all of them?
If you don't already do so, plan to back up your documents at least once every week. Backups take only a few minutes but can save you hours, weeks, months, even years of work.
Before you back up your documents, make sure they are well-organized. Save your files with easily recognizable names and in a central directory folder such as "MyFiles" or "My Documents". Avoid saving your files in program or system directories such as "Windows" or "Program Files". These folders contain files needed to run your computer. Accidentally moving or deleting one of these files could be disastrous.
If you are a Georgetown University faculty or staff member, you can back up your documents simply by saving them to your personal network drive. Instructions for using your network drive can be found at http://www.georgetown.edu/uis/help/account.
maintenance/backupPC.html. If you don't know how to find your network drive, make sure you are logged in to the Georgetown University network with your Novell NetWare account. Double-click the My Computer icon on your PC desktop or the System folder on your Mac desktop and look for a drive that begins with your Novell user name. This is your network drive, and it is backed up every day.
Your network drive has a capacity of 146 MB. Please remember when you save your documents that network drive space is limited. It is not necessary to copy programs to your network drive. Your programs can remain on your computer's hard drive while important documents are kept on your network drive. Be sure to clean up your network drive regularly, deleting documents you no longer need.
Faculty and staff members can rely on network drives for backup but will have to contact the HelpDesk in an extreme emergency such as hard drive failure; the HelpDesk will then schedule a time to restore lost files. Faculty and staff members who want backup copies close by or students who use Georgetown University lab computers can use local backup options such as Zip drives or CD-RW drives. Many computers at Georgetown University are equipped with Zip drives that can quickly copy your data to a 100 or 250 MB (megabyte) Zip disk. You can easily back up all of your data on only 1 or 2 Zip disks.
Newer computers at Georgetown University are equipped with CD-RW (CD-ReWritable) drives. You probably know you can use these drives to copy music or software CDs, but did you know you can also use them for backup? Each CD-RW stores 650 MB or 700 MB of data; the entire contents of your network drive can be saved on one CD.
To back up your files, you can simply open Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and copy your files from your central folder to your backup drive. Click on your folder, click the Edit menu, and then click Copy. Then click on your backup drive, click the Edit menu, and click Paste. Another option for Windows users is Microsoft Backup. To find Microsoft Backup, click the Start button on your screen, then double-click Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools. Microsoft Backup will "remember" the folders you back up so that the process is virtually automatic.
To be safe, keep two backup disks—one with you and one offsite in case of fire, flood, or theft. Backing up your data may take a small amount of effort, but it pays off in a huge sense of security.
Devlan Nocera is a technical writer for University Information Services.
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