  "What boots up
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a floppy? a recordable CD?Your personal files should always be backed up somewhere else, away from your main computer. Let's face it. If the unthinkable ever happened, you could always replace the computer. You might even have to reinstall all your favorite software applications. If you lost everything though, you could never begin to replace files you have created yourself. Once they are gone, they're gone! Your personal files could be letters, spreadsheets, newsletters, databases, or even pictures you have scanned. Once of the easiest ways to protect your stuff (cover your fanny) is to put a copy on on something other than your hard drive. It might be a recordable CD, an external hard drive, or even a (dare I say) 3 1/2 inch floppy disk. I have to mention a floppy disk because there are still a few computers that have them. Of course your average floppy will only hold 1.44 Mb of stuff, so it really isn't practical if you have really large files, or many files and folders you would like to back up. Back up your stuff at least weekly, more often if sensitive files are involved. Never save a file directly to any backup disk and never open a file and work on it from a backup disk. You are defeating your purpose and there will be only one file. If anything happens to it, or the disk is defective (it happens), you will be out of luck. In the "old" days, working from floppy disks was the norm. Hard drives were pitifully small compared to what is available today, and not much faster.
To make your stuff easy to find, begin by doing all your saving in the My Documents (or just plain Documents in Vista) folder. Windows makes the Documents folder one of the easiest folders to find. If you have a large number of files and want to organize them a bit better, you can always create sub folders later. When you are finished working on a file and have saved it properly, making a copy is as easy as right clicking on the My Documents folder and choosing Explore. Look in the right windowpane for your file. Right click on it and choose Send To, then click the words 3 1/2 inch Floppy or your recordable CD drive. Do I need to remind you to make sure there is a blankie in it first? Depending on the speed of your computer and the size of your file, you may see a little animation of a file folder with papers flying out towards another folder. When it is finished, you will have a nice clean backup copy. REMEMBER!
Got questions?
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