The first thing you need to know to come up with a backup plan is what you want to backup. Most of the machines on the market today come with some sort of recovery software that will reinstall all of the software that came with your system. This type of software is good because it will help you to recover from a disaster by giving you a known starting point in your plan. If you have the reconfigure software, I would recommend that you plan on using it in the case of a disaster and simply keep up with your data backups. This will make the recovery process a lot easier when the time comes. All you would need to do is run the recovery software and then restore your data and you would be back in business.

Now let’s look at your data. How much room, in megabytes, would it take to store all of the data on your system? Since we are planning to use a recovery disk, we only need to look at items like e-mail, letters, spreadsheets, financial programs and the like. Anything that you have made changes to would be considered data. You need to make a point to find out where each of the programs that you use stores the data file that you are using. If you are going to backup only the data, then it would be easier for you if it was stored in one convenient place. You would think that all of the software companies could get together and agree on one central location but this does not seem to be the case.

Microsoft Money puts the file in the folder where the program is installed by default. Quicken and many other programs use the same process. Windows 2000 and XP default most of the programs file saving location to the My Documents folder. This folder is actually a folder under the Documents and Settings folder. This tends to confuse most of the users since they click on a shortcut to get to the My Document folder and the files show up. It really doesn’t matter where the files are stored as long as you know where they are when you do your backup. You have the option to change the location by right clicking on the folder and then left clicking on properties. You can then click on Move and browse to a different location from the default. After you have chosen a new location you will be given the opportunity to move any existing files to the new location. 

My users at the office have a folder on the network that stores all of their data files. They click on My Documents and most of them have no clue that they are pulling files from a network drive. This also allows me to backup their data files when the server is backed up every night. This helps me as well as them in case there is some sort of disaster or hardware failure.

Take a look at the programs that you use and find out where the files are located. Microsoft Money uses one file to store all of your entries. When you move the file, Money will ask you where it is the next time you open the program. Browse to the new location and you are back in business. The program will default to the last file that was opened so you will only have to look for it once. Quicken will also default to the last file that you had opened but you will need to use the file utilities within the program to move the files to your My Documents folder. This is because Quicken only shows you one file when you open the data file, but there are actually four files, all with the same name and different extensions. If any of the files are missing, you will not be able to open that particular data file.

E-mail is another type of program that likes to hide your data from you. Microsoft Outlook defaults to another folder within the user folders. Everything in Outlook is contained in a file with the extension pst. You can find the location of the file by searching your hard drive for a file with the pst extension or viewing the properties of the personal folder in the folder view of Outlook. Click on the Advanced button and the location will be shown under filename. If you move this file into your My Documents folder, the next time you open Outlook you will get an error message saying that the pst file cannot be found. Browse to the new location and choose the pst file that you moved to continue opening Outlook. There will be another message stating that the location that messages were delivered to has changed and would you like Outlook to recreate the shortcuts. Choose yes and you will be finished with the move. Outlook Express will need to be moved within the Options of the program. Click on the Maintenance tab and then the Store Folder button. Click on Change and browse to the My Documents folder. There are a number of files that contain all of your Outlook Express data so a separate folder to segregate them from the general population would not be a bad idea. Shut down and restart the program to finalize the move.

No matter what program you are using, it is always going to be easier to keep up with your files if you will have a central location. You will need to do a little work to get all of the programs set up to use the same location but I can assure you that it will be better for you in the long run this way. Make a point to look through your programs and find out where your data is. I have seen more than my share of people without a plan that have lost everything. You don’t want to be the next one do you? Start with getting all your files in one place and then we can talk about how to get these files backed up on a regular basis.