Get in a Good Habit: Back Up Your Data
If you don't back up your entire hard drive, you should at least protect the vital bits. Here's how to get started.
Lincoln Spector
What to Back Up in Windows 2000 and XP
The good news here is that Microsoft has put everything you need to back up in one convenient place. The bad news is that it also put a lot of stuff that you don't need to back up in the same place.
Include List:
- C:\Documents and Settings
There, that was easy. Unfortunately, not all companies follow Microsoft's lead and save their data somewhere in this folder. Quicken, for instance, saves its data in C:\Program Files\Quicken, where a file backup is likely to miss it. If you want to include other important files, you'll need to figure out where a program saves its data. You may find the data location in the program's Options, Preferences, or Settings dialog box.
Or you can use Windows' Find or Search tool: Open the program, save some data, then close the program. Then, in Windows Explorer, press F3 to bring up the Find or Search tool. Look for all files on your hard drive created in the last day (the exact way to do this varies with different versions of Windows, but it's pretty easy to determine). Sort the results by date; the data you want will be among the newest files. You may have to add another folder or file to your Include List (My Documents is inside Documents and Settings, so if the program saves its data there, you're set).
For a Quicken fix, see "Put Quicken Data Where It Belongs."
Exclude List:
- *.bak
- *.tmp
- index.dat
- *.wbk
- ntuser.dat*
- usrclass.dat*
- *\temp\*.*
- *\temporary internet files\*.*
- *\history\*.*
- *\my recent documents\*.*
