So best in this Part 4 of my Good Boot Backup Nag for novices I’ll discuss more specific backup recommendations

My previous 3 backup nags have been ‘perhaps you’d be interested’ articles. So best in this Part 4 of my Good Boot Backup Nag for novices I’ll discuss more specific backup recommendations.

1. Your Backup regimen should never be so intrusive it encourages procrastination.
2. Novices in particular should select a software backup program that alerts them a backup is due by perhaps a pop up reminder or by an ever present, easy to access icon in their Taskbar Notification Area.

Note: I do not recommend novices set their backup program to backup automatically unless the backup program is an online backup e.g., Carbonite. One because an automatic backup might fail for whatever reason to backup as scheduled and do so without warning that the backup has failed and two, because I would prefer a novice take it upon themselves to become responsible for maintaining an appropriate backup regime and when they do, be in a position to observe that in fact it initiates.

3. That the backup file not be a proprietary file. Most proprietary backup software files can only be read by the backup software that created them. This requires that the backup program always be available and installed to restore the proprietary file. And an even more important reason not to rely on proprietary files is that should they be corrupted there’s no alternative way to restore the data.

In fact I recommend to all novices that the presentation of their backed up data files look as close to their Windows Explorer data file presentation as possible and that those backed up data files can be read and manipulated as though they were Windows Explorer data files.

4. That backup data be backed up to an external hard drive. I personally do not recommend flash dives because if by mistake data is deleted from a flash drive it does not go to the Recycle Bin where it can be reclaimed.

Note: Although backing up to CD’s and DVD’s is perhaps the best way to permanently archive and store data, because most users have data files that far exceed the capacity of a reasonable number of multiple CD’s and DVD’s I suggest for most an external hard drive is more practical.

5. If you’re as paranoid as I am about losing data, you initiate both an Exact backup and a Simple Copy backup.

I’ll demonstrate both types of backups next week. If you’d like to follow along, download a free trial of Second Copy at www.secondcopy.com.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.