Welcome to ItQLab

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~Anne Frank

IT Support Tips to make a difference in your daily life and provides system enhancement and development services and system maintenance support to endusers, is designed by

Protecting Important Data

Posted by Saboor Adem Monday, February 16, 2009 0 comments


Protecting Important Data and Personal Information from Loss by Backing it Up


Valuable data must be backed up regularly to prevent data loss due to hard disk Crashes, accidental or malicious hackers, viruses, or unexpected data corruption.


Examples of data that is stored on your local hard disk:


-Outlook Personal Folders, Personal Address Books.
-My Documents (MS Office documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, pictures, etc.).
-E-Forms.

Please follow one or more of the steps below to ensure that your data is safe and can be restored in case of emergency:

-If you place data on your home directory on a file server such as Exchange Server, departmental file server, etc., it is automatically backed up. Note that if the document is left open by an application such as Word or Outlook during the nightly backups, it will not be backed up and therefore it is recommended that all applications should be closed when leaving the office for the day.
-Use an external back-up media such as floppy disk, Pen drives, USB hard disks, CDs, DVDs, etc.
-Use an additional internal hard disk.
-Backing up data to another workstation’s hard drive through Windows folder sharing.Please note that it is also recommended to regularly check the media on which backup is taking place to ensure that the media is in good condition and that all the data is actually there.

How to Backup Your Data
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup. The Backup or Restore Wizard starts.

-Click Advanced Mode.
-Click the Backup tab.
-On the Job menu, click New.
-Click to select the check boxes for the drives that you want to back up.

-If you want to be more specific in your selections, expand the drive that you want, and then click to select the check boxes for the files or folders that you want.
Click to select the System State check box.Note If you want to back up your system settings and your data files, back up all the data on your computer plus the System State data. The System State data includes such things as the registry, the COM+ class registration database, files under Windows File Protection, and boot files.

-In the Backup destination list, click the backup destination that you want to use.
If you clicked File in the previous step, type the full path and file name that you want in the Backup media or file name box. You can also specify a network share as a destination for the backup file.
-Click Start Backup. The Backup Job Information dialog box appears.
Under If the media already contains backups, use one of the following steps:

• If you want to append this backup to previous backups, click Append this backup to the media.

• If you want to overwrite previous backups with this backup, click Replace the data on the media with this backup.
-Click Advanced.
Select the Verify data after backup check box.
In the Backup Type box, click the type of backup that you want.

When you click a backup type, a description of that backup type appears under "Description."
Click OK, and then click Start Backup.

A Backup Progress dialog box appears, and the backup starts.
When the backup is complete, click Close.Watch a Video TrainingYou may watch a Video clip detailing the above procedure on Microsoft Web Site. Click the link below http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308422/en-us

All XP installation CD-ROMs are bootable and Microsoft has removed the ability to create boot discs from the CD-ROM, however the downloadable files from these web sites can be used to create XP bood discs:Windows XP Home Edition boot disks
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33290 Windows XP Professional boot disks
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33291 You cant use XP Home Edition boot disks with XP Pro or vice-versa, and you can use boot disks only for new installations, not to initiate an upgrade.