How to Protect Against Data Loss From System Crashes

Very often, when a person's system crashes, there is a great amount of data loss as a result of having to format your hard drive and re-install Windows. Few people have the resources to "slave" the drive on another computer and extract their valuable information before redoing the system.

Microsoft has done a wonderful job in designing operating systems, but therein lies the trap! The default is to save your documents, files, photos, music etc in a folder called "My Documents" which is situated in "Documents and SettingsUsers" in the same drive as your Operating System. If your Operating System fails and you have not been methodical about doing back-ups (who of us is that religious about backing up data anyway), you are faced with a major problem - How do you retrieve your data before re-installing Windows?

There are ways of doing this but you need to have access to a spare P/C and not everyone has technical know-how to "slave" the drive with the damaged operating system in order to extract the data, nor does everyone have a "spare" P/C lying around waiting for just such an event. It can also be costly to take your computer in to have your data backed up when all you really should need to do is format your drive and re-load the O/S.

Most of us have, at one time or another, been faced with this problem. Here's how to avoid the aggravation of losing your data:

Firstly, make sure that your computer has more than one drive. This can be done in two ways:

1. When purchasing a new P/C, ask your supplier to install two separate hard drives. These will normally be labeled "C" and "D".

C: would be used mainly for the operating system and can be a smaller, entry level drive.

D: will be your storage drive and, because of the amount of data one accumulates over time, you would want this to be quite a hefty drive.

2. You can "split" your single drive into separate two drives - C: and D:

Now that you have 2 drives you need to transfer your data that you already have saved on C: to the new drive:

Firstly, create a set of folders on your new (D:) drive in which you wish to store your data. Make these logical directories that you will easily associate with - i.e."Business; Family; photos; music; movies" etc.

Now transfer your files from C: to these folders - this would be a good time to re-organise your data into logical groups - create sub-folders to categorise your information for easier future access. Most of your data will be found in "Documents and SettingsUsers"

Next you will need to modify where Windows saves your work. Most programs will work the same way - here is where you will find the file locations for MsWord, Excell, etc: Click Tools, Options, File Locations, Modify and then Browse to the folder you wish to be the default location (Possibly make this a "Transition" folder as you can then move the files later to the individual folders - Just so long as you save the file in D:)

Lastly, see if there are any other documents filed elsewhere in C: - you can do a search for *.doc and *.xls in Drive C once you have transferred all the above (* being used as a 'wild' search for all documents within the file extension)

Once you have transferred all your documents it would be advisable to Defrag your C: to ensure smooth running of your computer.

Now your computer is safe from Windows crashes and failures but be sure to understand that your data is not protected from a Physical Hard Drive Crash. So be sure to back up your data regularly on C/D or DVD. This will be much easier now that all your data is in one source.

A recently designed website by Bill contains other similar content and much useful information such as Household Hints, Sex and Relationship Tips, Health, Weightloss and Online Business Ideas with Freestuff throughout the site. There are also links for Online Shopping, Gambling with recipes and some humour thrown in.