Backing Up a Few Files or Folders

Even if you can't get around to a complete backup, you can protect yourself against the worst without too much effort by backing up your most valuable files and folders each day that you work on them.

Copying Files onto a USB Drive

Even on a slow system, it usually takes only a minute or two at the end of each day to connect a USB drive to your computer and copy the files you worked on that day. It's a good habit to develop.

If you typically work on only a few files each day, follow these steps:

1. Connect your USB drive to your computer.

2. Run Windows Explorer (choose Start All Programs Accessories).

3. Find the files you want to back up.

4. Drag-and-drop the files onto the USB drive in the folder tree (see "Dragging and Dropping Files and Folders" in Chapter 8). Or, select the files, choose File Send To (or right-click the file and choose Send To from the menu that appears), and choose your USB drive from the list of Send To destinations that appears.

If you work on a larger number of files, search for recently changed files to make sure that you don't miss any. Choose Start Search to search for all files modified within the last day. You can drag-and-drop files directly out of the Search Results window onto a USB drive icon in Windows Explorer. Or you can right-click any file in the Search Results window and choose Send To from the menu.

Tip  

If you use Search to list the files you've worked on today, construct your search in such a way as to avoid finding all the temporary files that Windows creates in the course of a day. (If you do a lot of web browsing, there can be hundreds of them.) These temporary files are contained in subfolders of the C:\Windowsfolder (or whatever folder Windows is installed in).

Copying Files onto Larger Drives

Anything you can copy onto a USB drive you can also copy onto a writable DVD or CD, a ZIP drive or other removable disk, a second hard drive, or another machine on your LAN. You can drag-and-drop the files to these media in the same way you copy files to USB drives.

A larger backup drive makes it less important to be selective about what you copy. You probably can copy, without too much time or trouble, your entire Documents folder (whether it is C:\Users\Msernflme\Documents or some other folder that you have chosen ) at the end of each day. You probably can copy your entire e-mail folder as well (see "What Should You Back Up?" earlier in the chapter).