How to take a backup of your Computer

All Computer users MUST learn how to take a backup of important files. Regular data backup is very important. You never know what can happen to your PC tomorrow. Computer viruses, hard disk problems and many other Computer problems can damage or completely destroy your valuable data.

Here is a very simple method to take a data backup of your PC quickly.

Step 1 ? Organize your files.

You must have all your files in a proper folder structure. Always use one root folder and keep files under sub-folders of the root folder. My suggestion is to create a folder directly under your C: drive instead of using My Documents folder. Once organized it will be easier to take backups.

Step 2 ? Select an external storage device

These days? storage devices such as USB storage sticks are very cheap. You can use USB sticks, CDs or an external hard drive to take backups. 

Step 3 ? Create a backup plan

A backup plan is very simple. It is about how you want to keep your data backups. For an example if you want to take daily backups and keep them separately then you can create 7 sub-folders in the destination backup storage device. This sub-folder can be named appropriately such as the date of your back up etc.

Perhaps you want to take weekly backup and keep 4 weeks worth of data at a given time. Then you can overwrite week 1 backup on 5th week.

All above are Computer backup plans.

Step 4 ? Create a BAT file to semi-automate the backup process.

A bat file is an executable file, which you can use to take the backup for you.

Let?s say you want to backup all files and sub-folders in your C:Docs folder to your USB stick. You need to identify the drive letter of the USB stick by visiting My Computer. Then create appropriate destination folder structure in the USB drive. Let?s say F: is your USB drive and you have created a subfolder named Backup to take today?s backup.

Now your task is to copy all files and folders in C:Docs to F:Backup

Here is how to create a bat file.

Open Notepad (Start > Run > Notepad)
Type following commands

Then click File menu and select Save As

Select ?All Files: from the Save As Type drop-down list

Type backup.bat as the file name and save the file directly under your C: drive.

The file name could be anything as long as it is ending with .bat file extension.

Here is an explanation of the commands in the bat file.

Xcopy ? this is the copy command
C:Docs ? source folder. 
F:Backup ? files will be copied to this folder.
/E ? copy directories and sub directories including empty ones.
/H ? Copy hidden and system files also
/R ? Overwrites read only files
/Y - Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing destination file.
Pause ? this will prompt you to enter any key to close the program.

Almost done.

Step 5 ? Let's see how to take a backup

Now you are going to run the backup.bat file. Here is what to do.

Click Start and select Run
In the space type as follows and click the OK button.

This will open a small black window and at the end prompt you to press any key.

That?s it. Go to F:Backup folder and verify whether all files and folders have been copied.