Hard Drives Fail: Backup

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Let's face it, we are all in denial. Losing data on the computer happens to other people. We never think that it can happen to us. Well unfortunately hard drives which stores your pictures, email, music and all other files on your computer can fail and when it does all your precious data are gone unless you saved it on another device.

So what do you do? Backup :)

Generally, you need to decide where you want to have a second copy of your files. You have several options. You can use CDs. You can also use an external hard drive. This usually connects to your computer via USB cable and shows up as another drive on Windows when you click on "My Computer" and a mounted drive on the MAC in "Finder".

Here are some great free backup programs you can use.


For Windows XP

• SyncToy

For the MAC

• SilverKeeper - This is from LaCie a company that makes external hard drives. The program is easy to use.
  

• PSyncX is great however you will need to supply the root users password when you run the program. The root user is a special user who has privileges to do pretty much anything on the computer. The problem is most mac users don't know what the root password is :). Please read this article "How To Set the Root Password Under Mac OSx" if you would like to know how to login as root