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| System Backup 101 |
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Page 2 of 4 One may ask, how big should the backup hard drive be? It depends on how much of your primary hard drive needs to be backed up. Do you have a plethora of data? Home videos, divx movies, software, pictures, mp3's? If so than we'd recommend a drive that's roughly 75% the size of your primary drive. Rule of thumb; if your primary drive is 120 gigs than your backup drive should be 80 gigs. Another method to determine size is to add up the average space used by all your data and double that number. For those who worry little about backing up mp3's, software and videos, we'd suggest a drive that's a half of the space you're currently occupying on your primary drive. If you're only worried about backing up e-mail, documents, and other data, you can settle for a smaller less expensive hard drive. Now that we've decided on the hardware we will be using for the backup, we need to decide what to backup. This is trickier than it sounds, so instead of trying to explain the millions of different ways of deciding what data to backup we're simply going to tell you our method and why we chose it. The first step is to put Windows (assuming you run Windows) on it's own partition of your primary hard drive. This is difficult if you already have a running PC. Typically, partitioning is done when you first install an oprtating system, so for those of you already running a system, perhaps you can do this next time Windows crashes (or when you upgrade to a new version of Windows). We'll offer suggestions later if you don't have Windows installed on it's own partition. When installing windows on it's own partition, make sure the partition you create is about three times that of the space the operateing system uses. Create another partition (or use another drive) for your programs, my documents, saved files, and everything else. The only thing that should be on the Windows partition is Windows and nothing else. The reason Windows is best to kept separate from your programs and saved documents is because if something were to go catastrophically wrong with Windows during an upgrade, update, or virus you could simply format and reinstall Windows and your programs and saved documents would be safe in the second partition (or second drive). In such a case, you'll lose your desktop and your start menu won't have links to all the programs, but at least all your documents, programs, e-mails, pictures, and everything else will still be safe. You may have to reinstall many of your programs. |
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