Back, Back, Back a Waaaaaaay Back
by Gary Woods

Everybody knows they should back up their computer, but the questions are what, how and when? The most important things for you to back up are anything that you created. Hopefully you still have the original disks for your programs, but word docs, photos, spread sheets, financial records all should be backed up. What about all your email addresses and favorites? Then there are your old emails? The answer is, if you'd miss it if it were gone, BACK IT UP!!

For how, you've got a lot of choices. Your old standby the floppy disk is almost obsolete, but there are Zip Drives, CD Writers, external hard drives, and my favorite a second hard drive in your computer. If you're afraid of poking around in your computer's innards you can go out to CompUSA and for the cost of the drive they will install it for you.

The second part of how, is what software? A lot of people use Norton's Ghost, but I like Drive Image 2002 by Powerquest. This wizard driven software will create a partition on your hard drive if you decide not to buy a second drive and then lead you through all the steps to backup your data. With the second hard drive and Drive Image it takes me about 10 minutes to backup all my data.

The final question is when? I backup every file on my hard drive once a week. If you're in an office you might backup every night and keep several backups archived so if there's a problem you can go back. Just remember, back it up, or kiss it good-bye.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910