Or

A Cautionary Tale With a Happy Ending when You Don’t Backup Regularly

The real point of this post is that to not backup your essential and important personal data is often likely to end in disappointment and loss of perhaps your most precious memories in the form of photos and documents. This is one instance where the bullet was dodged.

So What Happened?

I spent this UK bank holiday weekend with my daughter, granddaughter and new grandson. As usual I was asked to do a few DIY jobs and to sort out a couple of things on her computer:)

It all started with trying to fix a simple wireless networking connection issue. The main problem she was having with her PC was connecting the wireless router and had resorted to trailing wires across the living room to connect the router by the network cable. At least this gave the necessary access to the router and to the Internet if needed. Sorting out the router was basically down to setting the router name and password using the web based settings utility rather than the provide GUI based utility on the broadband providers setup CD. Not that the CD utility didn’t work but it was just more difficult than using the web based setup screens. A triumph of creating complication when trying to simplify things for a less knowledgeable user. Reference was made to the web based utility at the end of the instruction book “For Mac Users” so the average windows user would never realise it was there.

So setting up the user access to the router and connecting to the PC all went relatively easily. We had been out earlier that day and my daughter decided to transfer the pictures she had taken to her PC. Apparently at some point this froze and she turned the PC off with the power button. If only she had said something to me first! We could have at least looked at the options of invoking the task manager with Ctl-Alt-Del before going for the doomsday solution. As to whether anything done in setting up the wireless router caused the crash I don’t know, my personal feeling is that so many things get changed by installation of programs, windows updates, etc. that any OS is often only one or two changes away from “meltdown”

Disaster

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Identify Where the Data Is

This is part of the series :

10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data – Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed

The aim of which is to present good ways for backing up data in various different time frames, depending on the importance of the data and the need to restore it quickly or not.

Disclaimer

By necessity the information given is a simplified version of the situation you will normally encounter for a Windows OS and is based around XP. The infinite number of ways in which installations of a Windows OS can be varied followed by all the different ways in which programs can be stored or the places in which personal files can be written makes it impossible to be totally precise or to cover all eventualities.

What’s the Problem?

In order to develop a backup plan you first need to know what you should be backing up and where it is located. Unfortunately Microsoft and program developers for Windows based systems have found numerous different places to store program and personal data. Many of the ways are inconsistent and are often not intuitive, meaning that just because one program stores its data in a subfolder of a particular directory doesn’t mean that program X will do the same. In fact there are numerous different locations where program data may be stored and the same program may store different types of information in different locations. Confused? You will be .

Ultimately if you want to have a full recovery backup for a PC hard drive failure of other catastrophic data loss you will be interested in all the information necessary to restore your PC. However, for this type of backup you probably don’t need to know to much about where the data is stored except for which drives and partitions it is on. For backups targeted at particular personal files or programs you have loaded you need a lot more information.

What are the Different Types of Data & Where are They Kept?

For the purposes of this series of articles I am going to simplify the process and define the different types of data into four different groups:

1. Operating System
2. Applications/Programs
3. Applications/Programs Settings
4. Personal Files

In reality there will be a certain amount of overlap between groups and some data that may arguably fit into another area altogether.

1. Operating system data resides (principally) in it’s own drive and folder. This will normally be on the C drive in a folder called Windows but both the drive and the folder name can be defined differently when the operating system is installed. To check this you can start the System Information Utility (Start>Program Files>Accessories>System Tools>System Information – System Summary option – The Windows Directory and System Directory items show you where the data is kept. By the way this utility gives you a lot of details about the system) . This is where all the main programs/utilities/drivers and the system registry reside.

The Windows Registry, from my personal perspective, is a complete nightmare. Have you ever watched one of those crime programs where they spend days looking for body parts in a landfill site, well that’s my mental picture of the registry. Not only that if in your search for a something important and you move a half eaten can of bake beans a mile away then civilisation as we know it ends and cannot be recovered! OK that’s a bit of an exaggeration but years of experience have shown me that it takes about 40+ man hours to reinstall a Windows system plus all the programs and settings for one of my average setups (assuming I have reasonable backups of data files but not the system itself). Trying to sort out registry problems always takes longer and is never perfect.

2. Applications/Programs generally reside in a folder called “Program Files” on the C Drive which is normally the default location in a system that has been installed as standard. (Remember though that you can install a Windows system to almost any fixed drive and name the folder to anything you want) Occasionally some programs will install into the C Drive under a folder name associated with the program. Generally the program installer utility will ask you where you want to install the program so if you prefer to install all your programs on another drive or in another folder you can do this. BUT beware quite often the program will still install some “common” library functions or drivers elsewhere. For instance these may be under C:\Program Files\xxxxxx for the library files and in the Windows System folder for drivers. So already there is a problem in knowing where all the data resides for the programs you install.

3. Applications/Program Settings – Program settings can be stored in many places and frequently are. A single program will frequently put data in more than one place. At one time (long, long, ago before MS decided everything should be stored in the registry or user settings folders) programs stored information about themselves in terms of user configuration and last used settings in a file (*.ini) associated with the program or maybe some sort of data file (often a *.dat file) in the programs own folder or subfolder. This seems a pretty good idea to me in terms of backup, if I save the programs folder then I have essentially a complete backup of that program, if everything I need to run the program the way I want it is in there and nothing is in the registry that seems to be a great solution. If I am in a multi user environment then what’s the problem? Just name files or have pointers within files that deal with each user. Finally keep the files in a simple text format so that you can see what’s going on or (for the “power user” change anything that is obviously wrong) – why not?

So generally this type of data will be stored in:

1. The Windows Registry
2. User Settings folders (Generally C:\Documents and Settings/All Users or C:\Documents and Settings/”username” where username is your login name)
3. Files kept with the program installation folders or subfolders
4. Somewhere else (unusual but not unknown)

4. Personal Files - Personal files will generally be stored under the My Documents/My Pictures/My Music etc. folders and subfolders which are within the Documents and Settings folders for the user on a Windows system (C:\Documents and Settings/”username”). However, individual programs may choose to store files created elsewhere or the user may set folders in which to store particular files. Files may be stored in other folders in the Documents and Settings area that are designated by the program being used which may be under My Documents but also may be an independent folder. At other times they may (unusually) be stored in a folder on the main drive (generally C:\xxx) or in the Program Files subfolder for the program. Where you have control over the place files are written then some thought needs to be given on where you store these files and the reasons for this will be given in a future post in this series – Where to Store Your Original Data.

Portable Programs/Applications

Regular readers will know that I am a great advocate of portable applications. One of the best things about them, when they are properly set up and implemented is that all the essential data is located within a single set of folders and subfolders relating to the program. Where some data may need to be written elsewhere say to the registry or Startup folder then this is non critical and should preferably be included in an data file within the program folders so that it can be automatically replicated when the program is copied/ to another system and started for the first time.

Summary

1. Different data files for different purposes are stored in a variety of places and formats
2. Windows and program developers control where much of this data is stored
3. The storage of critical data files may be (is?) inconsistent in terms of where and how it is stored
4. Where the user has control over where data is stored this needs careful consideration in terms of accessibility and backup planning
5. Using Portable programs/applications generally gives better control over data location and backups

Other Relevant Posts:

10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data – Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

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Windows Live Data Free online data storage option has now officially been launched as as a “non-beta” offering with an impressive 5GB of free storage as reported by the

SkyDrive Team blog:

February 21

Welcome to the bigger, better, faster SkyDrive!

We know it’s been mighty quiet on the SkyDrive blog, but we’ve been hard at work on a new version that we’re proud to announce today!

You’ve made two things clear since our first release: You want more space; and you want SkyDrive where you are. Today we’re giving you both. You now have five times the space you had before — that’s 5GB of free online storage for your favorite documents, pictures, and other files.

SkyDrive is also available now in 38 countries/regions. In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., we’re live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

This is a part of Microsoft’s Windows Live initiative and appears to be a good way of storing and/or exchanging up to 5GB of your precious files online.

Personal experience using other free systems shows that the speed of transfer and limits on free storage capacity combine to make this only part of a strategy for backup or file exchange. The benefits are:

• Ability to access files from anywhere you can get an Internet connection
• Exchange files with others (friends, family, colleagues, etc.)
• Backup of important files away from the location of the originals (safeguard against fire or theft)

I shall be testing this out shortly and providing a review on what I find.

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