It is vital that you don’t neglect backing up your data. Vista users have some excellent options for performing this easy task. The risk of losing data is too high and if you value your business or personal data then you will place backing up data on a high priority.

You are aware of the top excuse:

“I am just too busy to spend time performing a backup…”

Yes, ok. That’s the guy whom moans at the vendor when his or her PC loses data due to various reasons. Nobody can make excuses here particularly if your business depends on the accuracy and accessibility of daily computer data. That is pretty commonplace within businesses worldwide today.

Rather than interrupt even damage your business or personal life (crazy how a machine can do that!), perform these important tasks and never worry about the possibility of losing all your data permanently. Imagine all your business tax information disappearing overnight. Do you really think the IRS will care?? No chance, no excuses. Lost bookmarks? Lost Photos? Lost memories? It can be avoided.

There are several circumstances where data loss can occur:

1. For me, it was a thunderstorm a few years ago. I lost more than half my drive due to a massive spike on the machine.

2. Disk drives lose their physical usability over time.

3. Motherboard shorts and power failures can damage the hard disk.

4. Viruses can corrupt data and leave it unrecoverable.

So, to back up and automate the whole backup process on Vista, go to Control Panel -> System & Maintenance -> Backup & Restore Center. For this example, you are seeing Vista Home Premium. The business edition may have extra options from here though these ones are generic to all Vista OS versions.

The first task to do is create a restore point. Click on Create Restore Point,

From here click Create, and you can set a restore point from that point in time. Vista does this periodically so you can roll back the system to remove unwanted changes from updates, etc. Also, from here, you can select the most recent restore at any time. Follow the Recommended Restore option, the computer will restart and roll back to that restore point.

From the Backup & Restore Center, you can backup to a USB device like an external hard drive or even a DVD. Click Backup Files and you will see the option to select a backup device.

It is vital that you do this often particularly if your hard disk contains sensitive and critical data. I would say once every month, back up just folders updated often; every 2 months, backup the whole computer. I learnt why to do this task the hard way a few years ago using the ‘don’t have time’ excuse mentioned earlier. Restoring is easy if file corruption occurs and you have lost data, use the restore point or your back up via the Restore Files option.

You will also notice in the bottom left of the Restore center, a link for Windows Easy Transfer.

This is another great addition to your data backup service, you can transfer files across a network to another computer.

So, there is no excuse if you use Vista. XP has similar options for backing up data from the control panel. If you don’t back up, expect to lose data very soon as it is inevitable.