16 - Worth Skore News -- Wednesday, December 1, 1999

pevel

THERE’S nothing.
worse than turning on
the computer to the
strange sounds of your
hard drive grinding

- away at start-up.
| Those unaccustomed
_ sounds of your compcter click-
ing and humraing could mean
that the grim reaper for com-
uters as come to claim your
ard drive. Unless you have
eared well beforehand for
this inevitable disaster, I can
assure you that you w ris
“ence the very depths of com:
puter despair. And ! emphasize
« the inevitability of the scenario.

‘our drive. WILL fail.

. Or maybe you just won’ be
“able to locate or open any of
_. the numerous files stored in
your’computrer. Be honest and
ask yourself what you would do

‘you went to your computer

ight now. and all your files -

ere: .gone: The proverbial
book you've been writing, fam

aly finances, invesument and tax -

-records, all the letters, projects,
music. and photos that you.so
sttx ously . collected and filed

ic. fast couple of y years.

—=—HIGH TECH

Add to this misery the
painstaking and laborious task
of reinstalling your operating
system, application software,
your personal configuration
settings, all the patches and
fixes that you've collected over
the last couple of years to finely
tune the well-honed machine
that you were so proud of.

Everything is a “do-ov

”

as my daughter used to say. The -

amazing thing is thaz this could
have ail been prevented by the
proper adoption of, something

‘we'll call back-up protocol.”

It is possible, of course,
even in“ the. absence of any
meaningful backu Bo rer
your ‘important files that’ you

could sttempt to recover lost a7“
. inaccessible files: At best, ee is

, ‘phe watoen Van.

guarantee that you will be able
to recover your files.

Any number of factors can
lead to hard drive maifunction
or data loss, including S
infection and in many cases,
simple human error. The good
news is thar by implementing
routine backup schedules your
information and data can be
safeguarded and this simple
task will help maintain your
: hen disaster dees strike.

A proper and effective back-
up protocol consists of what I
call three key SOS (Schedule

Organize Satckecp) principies:
% 1) Scheduling of regular
bickups on_a daily or weekly
basis. Let's face it, the only way
that anyone is going to be di
gent enough to backup his or
her files regularly is through a
brain free, scheduled, automat-
ic and unattended routine.
Aichough Windows 95/98 do
net allow for unattended back-
ups, virtually all third party
backup software programs offer
@ Way to automate the process;
& 2) Organization of your cur-
rent working, files in one loca-

op computer backup protoco!

tion. By default, Windows
95/98 use My Documents and
this is ideal. Ensure that you
save your daily work data to
this one location;

@ 3) Safckeeping of multiple
copies of the backup, including
one off-site. There is no sense
making backups of your impor-
tant files, only ro have these
tiles lost in a fire or stolen from
your office or home. Keep a
copy of your most recent back-
up in your briefcase or toss one

See Keep page 17

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