Back-up, Back-up, Back-up

Backing up your files is something you should do on a regular basis. If you have a hard drive failure on your and have not backed up your files, you will lose all your work. Unfortunately I have seen it happen many times in the school division. I’ve heard of people losing all their precious pictures on their home because their computer crashed. If you get into the routine of backing up your files on a regular basis, you will avoid, or at least minimize, the number of lost files. There are several ways to back up your files.

Using your H (home) drive At school, you can save your work-related files to your Home (H) drive. These files can be accessed from any computer in the school division by signing on with your email username and . There is a limit on how much can be saved here, so for very large files. 1. Double click “My Computer”; look for the Network Drives section. There will be one that starts with your last name. At the end it will say (H:) This is your H drive, also called your Home folder. 2. You can copy and paste your files from your computer, usually in your My Documents folder. Right click the file and choose Copy. To select multiple files at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on each file. When all the files you want to copy are highlighted, right click and choose Copy. Open your H drive, right click and choose Paste.

Copy your files to a USB Flash drive If you have a USB flash drive, also called a Thumb, stick, or pen drive, you can save your files in much the same way as copying them to your H drive. 1. Locate your flash drive by double clicking My Computer. Look for something that says “Removable Storage”. The drive letter it is assigned varies depending on your computer and can change from computer to computer. 2. You can copy and paste your files from your computer, usually in your My Documents folder. Right click the file and choose Copy. To select multiple files at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on each file. When all the files you want to copy are highlighted, right click and choose Copy. Open your flash drive, right click and choose Paste. Copy your files to a CD ROM disk You can “burn” your files to a CD disk for permanent storage. There are two types of CD ROMs. The first is a CD-R which allows you to copy files, but not change them. The second is a CD-RW which is re-writable. This allows you to make changes to your files. It will delete the old and replace it with the new file with the same name. CD-RWs are a bit more expensive. Most teacher and administrative computers in the division have a CD burner. If you don’t know whether your computer has one, you can look on the front of the drive drawer. If it can burn disks it will say Re-writable; if in doubt, ask your computer technician. 1. Windows XP and have built in CD burner software. Double click My Computer. Choose your CD-RW drive. 2. You can copy and paste your files from your computer, usually in your My Documents folder. Right click the file and choose Copy. To select multiple files at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on each file. When all the files you want to copy are highlighted, right click and choose Copy. Open your CD-RW drive, right click and choose Paste. 3. Now the files are there waiting to be burned onto the disk. Notice the little down arrow. Insert a CD into the drive and click “Write these files to CD”. If you do not have this option in the window, click File, Write these files to CD. The software will open a Wizard, just follow along to complete the burn process.

A few more things:

It is good practice to back up your files at least once a week. Extremely important files should be backed up as soon as they are created or modified. Personal files and pictures should not be kept on your H drive.