A Day On Wikipedia

== Protecting your computer data during a hurricane ==

Hurricane season is here and while many of us know what to do with our homes and cars, what about protecting one of your most important assets – your COMPUTER?

As we all know water and heavy things that go ‘bump’ and ‘splash’ don’t work so well with electronics. Whether we’re talking about family pictures, music, emails, financial records or other important files the goal is to ensure that this information is not lost. Of course, one way is to just pack your computer in the car and head out of town. That gets you away from the storm and out of harm’s way. For some folks that may work, for others that may not be such an easy task – and even if it is, you still haven’t really protected your information (data) from all the other types of failures that could occur. Wouldn’t it be nice to put a system in place now, so you don’t have to worry about it later?

”’So what options are out there?”’
BACKUPS! If your computer should crash, for whatever reason, it would sure be a relief to know that you have a copy of your data somewhere. Imagine that painful feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you’ve lost all your family photos or the financial data that makes your business tick. Ouch!

There are different types of Backups that one can do; disk imaging [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_image]], cloning [http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=75206], file backups [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup]], and others. Your goals and the complexity of your system will dictate the type of Backup that is right for you. However, at a minimum you will want to make sure you data is copied to an External Medium — something like a CD, tape, flash drive, external hard drive, or even online at some remote location over the internet.

”’So how does one go about making a ‘BACKUP’?”’
From the simple ‘fat finger’ method of manually copying files, to automating the process so it happens on a regular basis, backups can be made a number of different ways. There are many programs out there that do a great job of this, but if you are like me, I like Free… However, don’t be a penny wise and a dollar foolish. You should carefully consider your backup requirements and seek the services of a professional if you have doubts. Depending on your computing environment and the types of files and volume of data that you wish to protect it can get quite complex. For those of you that need a quick start there is a program on nearly all Windows machines called NTBACKUP [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTBackup]] that will walk you through this process. You can find it by clicking on: START > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup. The wizard will walk you through the rest. The above process gets you off to the races with regard to backing up your data. Of course, there is more to consider… we haven’t discussed security, viruses, firewalls, etc., but we’ll save that for another day.
Find this article referenced in the South Side Sun at [http://www.southsidesun.com] in the Technology Corner. Actual Article located at [[http://southsidesun.com/Portals/7/documents/Sept_Oct07/disaster%20web%20edition.pdf]]