Once you figure out whether you want to do a back up or not, you have to figure out where the things are that you want to back up. I save lots of things from the Internet, movies, pics, whole pages and, in some cases, whole web sites. Since I can’t be bothered to look around for everything on my computer, I save everything to my desktop. If you do that, of course, it doesn’t take long to get a very cluttered desktop.

A solution for this is to make a new folder on your desktop. Right click, new, folder then name it something you’ll remember. In my case, I call it STUFF. My Stuff folder is full of everything I save, all the flv files from youtube (that I never watch again), all of the pics I save from, ahem, educational sites, and things that other people send me on msn or QQ. Every now and then I check the size of this folder, right click then choose properties, and if the folder is up around four gigabytes, then I ‘back it up’!

Burnaware is my weapon of choice for burning CDs and DVDs. Not only is it free but it works quickly and efficiently and does just what it says it does, without screwing up everything else. As far as media goes, I use DVDs almost exclusively. There are two reasons for this, the first being that a DVD holds a helluva lot of stuff and, second, because they are cheaper to buy here in Canada than CDS. Our useless politicians in Ottawa have decided to tax CDs because everyone uses them to rob and cheat musicians, right? It’s not right but the idiots in power think this will actually help the poor starving artists around the world. Anyway, DVDs are cheap here. If I get a deal, I can buy ten DVD blanks for about $1.50. I buy hundreds at a time so I always have a stock of fresh blanks for these backups.

Burnaware burns the DVD quickly then I go through the DVD which I have just written and make sure that everything on it can be read. If you burn a lot of DVDs you will know that sometimes a burn goes bad. Sometimes a burn goes bad and you don’t even know it. For this reason I always double check that my computer can read the disk. If the things you are backing up are REALLY important, then you might want to make double copies and check the burned DVDs on another computer before you delete the original material.

I should say here, again, that a back up does two things. It can clear up space on your hard drive, and it saves important things from being lost if your hard drive crashes. I don’t really have a problem with space on my drives so, while I back up my important stuff frequently, I also like to have it around to work with, too. How do I keep track of it all? Well, remember my ‘STUFF’ folder? If I burn it to a DVD then I simply rename the folder to ‘Stuff – Already Burnt’ so I know not to burn it again. And, obviously, I don’t add anything more to that folder. I just create a new ‘stuff’ folder and start again.

Next time I will explain how to use Cathy to organize your back ups. Stay tuned!