A Handy Guide to Backing Up your Data

Why should I back up my files?

Let's face it: computers can be temperamental. Files can get corrupted or disappear without much reason, or your computer can crash and wipe out all your important information. True, this doesn't happen very often, but to protect yourself from such disasters, you should make sure to "back up" your most important files by copying them to at least one alternate location. Very important files, such as your thesis and other large academic projects, should be backed up in multiple locations. Fortunately, there are a large number of different ways for you to back up your data.

What should I back up?

It is impossible to tell you all the data you need to backup, but here are some general ideas:

Save data that cannot be replaced easily and is important to you. Do not back up programs, because they can be reinstalled using the original installation method (for example, from a CD). For example, do not back up Microsoft Word but do back up any important Word documents that you have.

Typically people miss their:

• e-mail addresses/contacts list
• e-mail messages
• Favorites list (bookmarks)
• Word and Excel Documents
• music (mp3s) files
• digital pictures

Where do I find this stuff?

Windows computers

Luckily, Windows puts all of your important documents and settings in one location, conveniently named the Documents and Settings folder. Go to My Computer > C:\ > Documents and Settings. The folder marked with your username is the folder you want to back up. This will save all your Office documents, your bookmarks, your address book, and most of your other files. Note that unless you're using POP3 for your e-mail, your messages will still be stored on the server, so you don't need to make a backup of them. (We have a separate section for backing up your e-mail if you wish to do that.) If you've saved files to locations other than the default, make sure you track those down.

Macintoshes (OS X)

To back up important files on your Macintosh, open the Macintosh Hard Drive, double click on Users and back up the folder with your username. As with Windows, most of your files should all be saved in this folder. If you know of files in other locations, make sure you back them up too.

Methods for backing up your computer

E-mail important files to yourself

This seems to be a very popular option among Pomona students. As long as the file isn't overly large, you can write an e-mail to yourself and send it as an attachment. Attachments are limited to 10MB, so check your file size first.

Save important files on a thumb drive

Pomona provides 64MB thumb drives to all students. These can plug into any lab computer, or any computer with a USB port, for that matter. You should be able to fit most of your documents onto your thumb drive (though keep in mind that pictures take up much more space than text documents).

Copy your files to your Pomona userspace

You want to connect to the following network share:

Windows:		\\campus.pomona.edu\pomona\userspace\student-<year>\<username>
OS X (Mac):		smb://fargo.pomona.edu/Students/<year>/<username>

Where <year> is the year you arrived at Pomona (e.g. 2006) and <username> is your Pomona username (e.g. ces02006).

How to connect to a network share:

WindowsWindows

Mac OS XMac OS X

Other methods

If you're using one of the machines in the computer labs, your userspace is already mounted on the H: drive. In addition, anything saved to My Documents, My Pictures, your desktop, etc. will automatically be saved into your userspace.

If you're going to be using your userspace a lot, you can mount it as a network drive instead (Windows users only).

Copy your files to a different partition

If you have multiple partitions on your hard drive, you can move your files around between them. To do this, you'll need two Windows Explorer windows (eg My Computer windows) open: one with the current location of the files, and the other with the target location of the files. Once these windows are open, you can simply drag files between them to move them around.

Copy your files to another hard drive

If you have multiple hard drives, storing things on both drives protects against a failure on one of them. It's also handy if you run out of space on your primary drive! If installing another drive in your computer doesn't sound like your thing, you can try an external hard drive. Copying files is the same as with another partition - open two Windows Explorer (eg My Computer windows), find the stuff you want to back up, and drag it to the other drive.

Burn your files to a CD or DVD

CDs hold a great deal more information (700MB) than your school-issued thumb drive (64MB), and DVDs hold more still (a whopping 4.7GB!). This is a nice option for backing up the entire contents of your computer. To do this, you'll have to have a burner in your computer. A CD burner can only burn (write information to) CDs, while a DVD burner can burn both. You can either use your CD writing program of choice (such as Nero, Roxio, or Toast), or you can use the CD burning capabilities of your operating system.

PC (Windows XP) | Macintosh (OS X)

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Using Windows to burn a CD

If you're just looking to transfer data files, such as text documents, pictures, or music in a non-playable format, Windows has a simple and very fast way of burning CDs. Pop a blank CD into your burner.

Occasionally you'll get this window. If you don't, open up My Computer and click on the appropriate drive. You'll get a window labeled something like "CD Drive (F:)" that has no files in it. Now open up My Computer again and navigate to where you have the files you're trying to burn. For this example, we're using pictures from a recent trip to Disneyland. Click and drag the appropriate files to the first window. If you decide you don't want to put something on your CD, delete it. This won't delete the file from your hard drive, since the files in the CD window are only temporary copies until you've burned them.

Before you burn the CD, you'll want to check the total size of your files. If it's not a rewritable CD (one that you can add content to later), you'll want to get the most use out of it, and the CD won't burn properly if you've got too much stuff. To check on the size, highlight all the files together and right-click. A little menu should pop up; click Properties.

This will tell you the total size of your files. It's "Size on disk" you're worried about; here that size is 5.80MB. Remember, a CD can hold up to 700MB, and we have several pretty much uncompressed pictures here taking up less than ten percent of that, so you can save quite a lot of pictures to CD. Click Ok when you're done here.

Once you're satisfied with what you've got, click Write these files to CD on the left side of the window. The friendly CD writing wizard will pop up. Pick a descriptive name for your CD, so you can easily tell what's on it whan you stick it in your computer. Click Next when you're ready.

You'll get a green status bar as the CD writes. When it's done, it will eject itself. If you're going to make multiple copies of this CD, check the box next to Yes, write these files to another CD. If not, just click Finish. Grab your nearest marker and label the CD so you don't forget what it is.

Using Mac OS X to burn a CD

Simply insert a blank CD into your CD drive, and the following dialog should appear.

Selecting the option to open Finder will allow you to add files to the CD to burn. You should add full copies of the files - do not just create aliases, or that is all that will be burned! You will know if you have added aliases because they will have small black arrow overlays on the bottom of the icon. You can also check the size of the content on the CD in the bottom of the finder window to make sure it matches up.

Once you have added the files, click on the radioactive icon in the left pane next to the CD name, and a dialog will appear to give you more options for burning your CD.

You can name your CD, and this will be the volume name. You can also select a speed to burn your CD at. Higher speeds burn faster, but are more likely to cause errors when burning. If you find that many of your CDs don't work properly, try reducing the burning speed in the future.