Make your PC easy to Backup…

As I said a couple times last week my notebook computer started suffering from some hardware issues which resulted in a trip back to the manufacturer. This is the second time in two years I've had to ship my PC back to Gateway and I'm 100% happy that I got the extended warranty when I first purchased it.

While I waited for the shipping materials to arrive I started going through the process of backing up all the items that I didn't want to loose if Gateway saw the need to format my PC. One thing I found that was very helpful was the manner in which I had previously organized all of my personal files.

On previous computers I really didn't have a plan for dealing with my files. From Word documents to image files everything was everywhere. At the end of any computers lifespan I'd have to say close to 70% of the files on it died with it - needless to say there's a ton of old stuff I wish I had kept better track of.

My new laptop is a different story though. Somewhere shortly after purchasing the computer I decided to take advantage of the "My Documents" approach that Microsoft started pushing with newer versions of Windows. The result of this was a backup process that took only a few minutes and definitely has every file I've ever saved on that machine.

Here's how I did it:

• First I broke "My Documents" into several sub-folders (including a new "My Documents" folder.)
• My Documents: This is probably the only sub-folder in this system that I didn't add sub-folders too. Any documents (including spreadsheets, documents, and saved pdf files) are spread throughout this folder. In each case I'm careful to name documents descriptively so as to guarantee a cursory browse of the name or date can help me find the right file quickly.
• My Pictures: Broken into several sub-folders again, "My Pictures" houses "My Digital Folders," "My Downloaded Images," "My Original Graphics." These folders hold ALL my saved images in a pretty obvious format and are divided into appropriate sub-folders as needed to make finding things easier.
• My Music: I setup Napster (my current music service) to save all music files to this directory and break them up by artist and album title. When I rip my own CDs I follow the same rules - this is a great way to track my music and also made backing things up very easy.
• My Backups: On a monthly, weekly and in some cases daily basis I back certain things up. My feed list gets backed up just about every month, my bookmarks every week, and things like My Quicken files get backed up every day. Keeping all these files in one place makes it easy to find them when you need them and also easy to back them up when you're trying to hit everything important.
• My Briefcase: Does anyone else use this Windows feature? I've been using "My Briefcase" ever since I started using two computers. It's a simple way to keep files up to date across multiple PCs and a it's really portable. After downloading the SyncToy powertoy from Microsoft I also found it a great way to sync up "My Briefcase" quickly when first sitting down at a PC.
• Outside of these folders / directories I also keep a few files including my GTDTiddlyWiki install, and any document that I'm currently working on.

While I'm sure it wasn't necessary to name everything under the "My BlahBlah" scheme I did feel it fit the overall plan best.

Besides cutting the number of directories I needed to find down to one (just the main "My Documents" folder) I was also able to accomplish a few other things. By right clicking on the folder I was able to see exactly how much space I needed to backup everything (It turns out I had close to 650 folders loaded with over 7k files.) While I didn't need to split everything across multiple backup locations I could have easily split everything up onto SD cards or USB drives. If you did it the right way you could easily put your Music files on one SD card and your Documents on another.

This system worked out great for me but ultimately you'd need to find your own setup. The trick, which is the heart of this, is to create a setup whereby you can easily find everything in the fewest number of clicks.