emi,
> The term "backup" seems to imply that you must use a Backup program
> which is
> a long long way from the truth.
Being a person with great interest in language I had to respond. The
term 'backup' can be used to describe the result of either a backup
program or even manual copying of files to some place where they can
be assumed to be safe. You can use the term to mean a back up program
or a process.
Having said that I can see why people might prefer to use a program
designed specifically for backing up files. It seems to me that one
should first have a back up strategy before deciding whether to use a
back up program. My own strategy is two pronged, one prong being to
back up data files whether those files were created by my applications
or they are just files I have collected. The second prong of my back
up strategy [notice how I have purposely used the two words back and
up separately.
One problem that I became aware or early on is that many programs that
created data files want to safe those files in the same area as the
program is installed, so I started to force their saves to some
separate part of my hard drive. The reason for this was that it makes
backing up those files impler. In fact I have a separate partition for
my data files. Thus the first time I save data from a program I make
certain that the file is saved in that special partition, usually in
one named for the program, like my Word Perfect files with their .wpd
extension.
This data strategy results in my being able to simply back up the
files on that special partition. I can do this with either a ;backup'
program like Karen Kenworthy's 'Replicator' or even by just dragging
the files individually or by folder to the target media whether that
is an external hard drive [my favorite since those drives are usually
quite large. Or possible burning them to DVD's or even better double
layer DVDs. The latter allows my then to store the medial off site or
in a small safe.
The other prong of my back up strategy is backing up the OS and the
installed programs. My favorite program for this process is Norton
Ghost.. The version that I use is a few years old, it created a CD to
which I boot the computer from the disk, then select source and
destination media. As far as I know that only reason that one cannot
just copy the files on the C drive to the destination is that the OS
will not allow copying of files that are running. and some of the OS
files are running when the OS is running. However a copy program that
boots from a disk avoids the problem problem by not booting the OS.
If you have a limited number of applications and not a lot of bundled
junk programs you can simply back up data then resinstall the OS
followed by your applications. This might be prohibitive in most cases
but you should always be ready to be able to do this in case you
copies of the C partition get damaged or you have not updated it in
awhile.
Jim
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