Tag Archives: Backups

Backing up your computer, Basics, Computers

The Click of Death – Another reason to back up your computer

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We turn our computers off at night. To us, there is no sense to keep them running, even though some people leave theirs running 24/7. When we started our main server this morning, we heard a click. Now, computers make all kinds of little noises but a click is one of the scary, alarm signals that you really don’t want to hear. Usually a click means that a hard drive is on the way out. It could be a sticky platter (the things that store the information) or it could be one of the heads (the things that suck up and put down the data). Whatever it is, it spurred us on to back up our drives.

We have a new 3 T (terabyte) external drive from Western Digital. Here’s what it looks like:

Photo of WD External Drive
3 T of space.

 

This is what we’re using for the backup. Once the data is safe, we’ll probably burn it all to BluRay data discs, just to make sure it is even more secure from hardware failure.

 

We’ve discussed backing up your computer before. Here the some of the posts: Back up 1, back up 2 . There are others, too, so check around the site.

Backing up your computer isn’t necessarily to save things that you have downloaded. Those items are going to be around for a while, they won’t disappear tomorrow. The thing you don’t want to lose are things that are irreplaceable. Those would include family photos, family videos, things you’ve written, etc.

The click of death that we heard may be nothing but we’re not taking the chance. You shouldn’t either. Back up your computer now. Schedule weekly backups or use the software that is included with the My Book Essential drive. The drives are not expensive, ours was under $130 CDN. This isn’t much when you consider how bad you’d feel if you lost all of the memories on your computer.

Thanks for reading!

Back Up Wordpress Blog, Backing up your computer, Computers, WordPress

Easy WordPress Backup

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Backing up a WordPress blog isn’t as difficult as you might think. Sure, there are many plug-ins available which will back-up your WordPress databases but if you just want to keep a copy of your posts, here’s how to do it.

Head to your WordPress blog and click on the word Tools on the left hand side of the page. You’ll either see a pop-out on the right if you just hover the mouse over the word Tools or you will see this if you click the word:

Photo of Available Tools
We’re looking to Export here so click on that.

Since we’re trying to keep a record of our posts, we’ll choose Export. If we wanted to insert these posts into the blog, we would choose Import. This is what you’ll see next:

Photo showing WordPress Tools
You can choose to back up everything or just your posts and/or pages.

You can choose to download All Content or just your posts. Whichever you choose, WordPress will quickly get an .xml file ready for you and it will automatically download that file to your computer, usually to your Download folder or the folder you have chosen for downloads. Once there, you can open the file with whatever program Windows has set up to deal with .xml files. Here, Adobe Dreamweaver opens them but you could use Safari or Chrome or even Notepad. The file you download is full of ‘markup’ language, hence the name, but you will be able to find all of your words very easily.

Once you have the file saved,  you don’t have to do anything with it. It’s a back up. Your site is still running, your WordPress installation is still working perfectly but now you can relax, knowing that all of your posts have been saved. They won’t get lost in a server crash. If, god forbid, that ever happens, you’ll be able to copy and paste all of your posts into your new WordPress blog. You’ll have to do them one by one but, hey, at least you won’t have to rewrite every post.

Now don’t misunderstand us. We use plug-ins to back-up our databases and, of course, our hosting company saves back-ups as well. We were looking for an easy way to save all of our posts and this works very well. Try it, you’ll rest easy knowing that nothing is lost.

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Back up your bookmarks, Back ups, Backing up your computer, Windows

Back Up Your Bookmarks

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Yesterday we had a slight disaster here at Computers Made Simple. As  you can guess, we install and delete software about as often as most people change their TV channel. Last week we tried out a torrent app, you know, the ones that install everything else with the torrent downloader. Well, when we uninstalled the software, which will remain nameless in the hopes that no one else will install it, it deleted all of our Chrome bookmarks.

Thankfully, we had two separate copies of these bookmarks in two separate places. One was in a desktop folder, the other in our Dropbox folder. Thank heavens for Dropbox…we keep saying that and, hopefully, you will make use of it. Dropbox really can save your from losing important data, photos, writing, videos and, yes, bookmarks. Here’s how to back up your bookmarks to save the annoyance of losing them.

We’re only dealing with Chrome here, what we feel is the best, safest, fastest and most streamlined browser out there. Your browser of choice may be different but the steps we explain here will be somewhat similar.

The bookmarks themselves are most likely a data file that Chrome accesses when you need it. When you export the bookmarks, which is what we will be doing today, you are asking Chrome to create a webpage or HTML document which will act as your backup. When you want to use those bookmarks again, whether it’s on your current computer because you’ve lost them or on another computer, you ask Chrome to import that same HTML file.

Head to the wrench up on the top right of your screen, click it and look for Bookmarks. Run your mouse down to the word Bookmarks and a side menu will open up. Look for the words Bookmark Manager. This is what all of that looks like:

Wrench to Bookmarks to Bookmark Manager
Bookmark Manager is what you're looking for on this menu.

Once you open the Bookmark Manager, which is essentially a webpage, look for Organize then Export bookmarks to HTML file. This is what you’re looking for:

Export your bookmarks on this menu.
Choose Export now, Import when you want to restore the bookmarks.

Once you click on Export, you’ll be asked where you want to put the file. We would advise you to use your Dropbox folder but that’s up to you. As long as you save a copy of the file on a flash drive or CD/DVD, you’ll be fine. Don’t forget to make backing up your bookmarks a part of your normal back up routine.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

Back ups, Backing up your computer, Cloud Storage, Computers, Windows

How do I back up my computer? Part 3

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Once you have figured out where all of your stuff is, including documents, photos and videos, it’s time to sort it all out and back it up. Sure, you could dump everything onto one or more DVDs but it makes more sense to organize things a bit beforehand. In this case, photos are more important to arrange than anything else because the files names are arbitrary unless you rename every one. Once you have the various folders in one place, you can sort them out by date, naming the separate folders by when you took the photos or by subject, if all of the photos in a folder can be identified by a few words.

Videos can be named or arranged by date but taking a bit of time now to rename each avi file will make it easier to find what you are looking for at some point down the road. If you have recorded any HDTV shows that you want to save, make sure you convert them to XVID files using Format Factory or  Handbrake to save storage room. Both programs do a fine job of transferring recorded video files to the DIVX or XVID format. The file choice is optional, of course. Use the type of file that you’ve had experience with and works best with your other hardware.

We should mention now that some programs save their files in places other than My Documents. CamStudio, for instance, saves its avi files in the CamStudio main folder. There is a link to those files in My Documents but that is only a shortcut. The files themselves are kept somewhere else. This also applies to Audacity. When you have been working on an audio file in Audacity and you haven’t completed your work, it’s a good idea to back up all of the Audacity files BEFORE you lose them in a hardware crash. Once you export your files in Audacity, you can choose the format and, if you are satisfied with your efforts, you can get rid of the working files. But if you are still working on the files, save them. You’ll find them in the main Audacity folder, not in My Documents.

If you’ve been diligent about telling each program where you want it to save your work, your job is much easier when it comes to backing up your computer.

What’s next? Well, we use Burnaware to make backup DVDs. Burnaware is fast, stable and free. Since DVDs are relatively cheap, we can get 100 for less than $20, you might even want to make backups of backups for important files. Keep each backup in a separate place, maybe even distributing family memories to various relatives. Mark the disks with a Sharpie and put them in a protective package which is also clearly marked with the date and some descriptive words.

Lastly, think about backing up any material that’s ‘in the cloud’. Dropbox is about as secure as you can get but who knows what their financial status is? Backup the Dropbox folder on your computer whenever you back up everything else. That backup isn’t dynamic, of course, so be sure to only use it as a backup in case of emergency. Don’t try to integrate the old files with your current Dropbox files at some date later on. Saving old files over newer files never works.

We can’t hold your hand all the way through but we’re here to help. If you have questions, ask us. Comments are welcome, yays or nays, it doesn’t matter.

Thanks for reading!

Back ups, Backing up your computer, Basics, Hard Drives, Windows, Windows Secrets

How do I back up my computer? Part 2

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When it comes to backing up your computer, what exactly are you backing up? Well, pretty much everything that you have added to it. This includes, but is not limited to, documents you’re written, photos you’ve taken as well as anything that you’ve downloaded from the Internet such as videos, photos, audio files, Etc. What you aren’t able to back up are all of the Windows files, the program files nor any of the browsers or apps that you use. There isn’t a way to back these last things up anyway, unless you want to copy your whole drive. Even then, none of the programs would work. You’re backing up your stuff, not Windows or related stuff.

If you have purchased a new computer or laptop/netbook, it most likely didn’t come with any CDs or DVDs. These days, new computers don’t come with these system disks. You have to make them. Windows will prompt you to make new recovery disks and this is something you should do as soon as you can after purchase. If your computer fails, you can restore it to its original condition by using these disks. But, and this is a big but, creating the recovery disks has nothing to do with backing up your computer. When you create recovery disks, you are only backing up the original software that came with your computer, nothing that you have saved or created since you started using it. Remember that.

Where is all of your stuff? Nine times out of ten, everything you want to back up is in the My Documents folder. Windows automatically saves files to different folders in My Documents. Even the downloads from the Internet are saved there. This, however, doesn’t mean that everything is saved there. Some programs save your creations in completely different folders, ones that the program creates on its own. If you have things that are important to you on your computer, make sure you know where they are.

Windows Explorer, that folder on the bottom of your taskbar in Windows 7 or the ‘Explore’ program that comes up when you right click the start button and choose ‘explore’, is your friend. Get used to using it. All of the cool things on your computer can be found using Windows Explorer. Explorer is worth a blog entry on its own, it’s that important. Play around with it and see what you can find. I use it all the time and it’s one of the reasons I stick to Windows. The Mac OS has nothing like Explorer, that I have found anyway, and I get claustrophobia using OS X simply because I can’t find anything!

While we are discussing back ups, go back and read my post on WinDirStat . If you’re wondering where things are on your computer or if you simply want to know what’s taking up the room, read the post and you’ll be educated. WinDirStat is free and perfect for exploring your computer. Once you have the graphic up on your screen, run your cursor over it to see where everything is. As the cursor moves, the location of the file it’s resting on is shown. Some files, the Windows ones for instance, are huge but can’t be touched. Others, usually the blue ones, are your files and can be backed up.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow I’ll write more about actually performing the back up. It’s a step by step job that takes time but, ultimately, will save your bacon should your hard drive fail. Even if you only save precious family photos, it’s worth it, right? Some things that are lost are lost forever. That’s not a good feeling.

Thanks for reading!