Welcome to the first issue of SAVED! 
The purpose of this online help site is to give family and friends a common place to contact me and have your computer related questions answered and shared with everyone else.  So if you have any PC related questions, email them to me here. 

How often I update this web site will be entirely up to you.  I hope to make this a monthly web site.  But you need to send in your questions.

To start things off, I will begin with a common problem that I have notice on many of your computers. 

Computers do fail.  Just like any other appliance or device you own, computers can and eventually will break down.  If you only use the computer to play games then you have no worries.  But if you are reading this article then I suspect you, at very least, visit web sites and save "bookmarks" to those web sites.  This is only one form of "data" you may never want to lose.  There is more data, your email address book, your checking and saving account information, your word processing, and electronically stored photographs are all forms of data you just cannot live without when your computer breaks down.

Some of you have had computers for years and never once backed up your data.   You generally fall into one or more categories of people.  1).  The "I don't care" people.  Well, there is no helping you then.  I hope there's nothing very important stored on your computer.   2).  The "I never backed up before, and I never had a problem" people.  I'm sure that is true, but computers have a very nasty habit of breaking down at the very worst possible time.  Like say, just before you about to do your taxes and it's April 14th.  3).  The final group of people fall into the "What's a backup?" category. 

What's is a Backup?

A backup is a copy of your important files stored on diskettes, zip disks or CD-ROMs and place in a secured place such as a fire-proof box.  This copy can then be used to recover lost files due to you computer breaking down, or an accidental deletion of a file, or computer virus infections.

How often should I Backup?

How often you backup depends how often you change your important data on the computer.  But you should never wait longer than a single month to backup, however, some people will need to backup weekly due to heavy computer usage.

How do I know what to Backup?

You need to backup the files that are important to you.  The real question is how do you find them when you are ready to back them up.  On your desktop is a folder called "My Documents", every time you create a word processing file, or a spreadsheet, or a new picture file, or should save the file in this folder.  Doing this will make you life a lot easier when it is time to backup your important data.

How do I Backup?

Sometimes a backup can be as easy as printing out your address book and placing it in a safe place.  However, you should invest in either a "Zip drive" or a CD-ROM drive that is "CD-RW" capable.  The "Zip drive" comes with a special backup program.  The CD-ROM will act like another hard drive on you computer and you will be able to just copy the "My Documents" folder to it.

How do long should I keep the Backup?

Ideally you should keep at least 3 sets of backups.  This gives you the ability to recover older copies of files that you may need back, after having changed them.  After you have the 3 sets, the next time you backup, re-use the first backup set.

SPECIAL NOTE:

Some information is not so straight forward to backup.  Typically your Web Browser "Bookmarks" and "Cookies", and your email address book and the actual emails.  Most Web Browsers and Email programs have an Export option that allow you to create a special file that you can save in the "My Documents" folder.