Monday, July 2, 2001		Article

Backing up your critical data files
Vipul Verma

THERE is nothing more painful in computers than finding one fine morning that your hard disk has crashed or some virus has eaten up your boot sector or data in your hard disk is corrupted. This virtually spoils all the hard work you have done so far and your precious data is lost for good.

Though we all know that any one can face this situation and this kind of failure could take place in any machine either branded or assembled, but we hardly make any attempt to safeguard our own interest. Thus in 99 percent cases the user himself is responsible for his loss whereas only in 1 per cent cases the computer is to be blamed. It is therefore in your interest to always backup your critical data.

Regarding backup, also many people do the mistake of either taking a back up in some other partition of the same hard disk or floppy disks. However, this may not be a real solution as in case of a hard disk failure the drive itself does not remain accessible. Whereas in case of floppy failure the disk is rendered useless.

What, then, should ideally be done for taking a back up? Well! This question may not have a universal answer as it would depend on the criticality of the data but taking the backup on a CD or a Zip drive would be the best option. Now days the CD writers have become very cheap and the Zip drives are even cheaper, faster and versatile. So, one should now prefer to have either of these as a part of standard configuration. Taking a back-up on these media is really very easy and also economical. However both of these media have their own benefits. Zip drives are cheaper in comparison to a CD writer and their diskettes are reusable and are cheap. However, as the CD-RW is more versatile in terms of use though it is more expensive. Using these methods of backing up you can even make a copy of your hard disk, besides making a back up of your critical files.

In case of professionals like doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers etc. the use of computers is very extensive and the data is being added in the computer every now and then. Thus in all such cases, taking a back-up either daily or periodically at a short interval of time could be very cumbersome and at times unpractical. So, in all these cases there is a good option of installing a mirror hard disk in your computer, which will make a copy of your hard disk just like the one you are working in. All the additions and deletions of the data is being done exactly like your master hard disk. Thus if at all your hard disk fails, then the mirror hard disk can be used both for restoring the data and also as the master hard disk. This way the security of your data is ensured very conveniently and at an attractive price. Since these days large capacity hard disk of 40 GB is available at reasonable prices, thus in a way mirroring of your hard disk could be the cheapest and best alternative with the disadvantage of sacrifice of the speed.

Now the big question is how to take a back up of your data from your hard disk. In this regard it is very important to understand that it is not necessary to back up your whole hard disk to another hard disk, CD, Zip Drive or even floppy diskettes. It would not only be time consuming but would be quite expensive too. The best way is to take a back up of your critical files and also programs. You can make floppy copies of your installation disks using the Copy Disk command in My Computer, if your programs came on floppies. However, for CDs, the programs are safe. If your computer is a branded one, then you get preloaded or "bundled" programs. If they came on a "master CD," then you use that to reload the program id the need so arise. However, if the program is on floppies then it is always better to dump them in your hard disk besides keeping the floppies safe. Since the floppy is not a very reliable medium, thus the dump can be used for future use. In case of bundled programs you can also ask for the duplicate disks from your dealer. Then the next most important thing is to back up all your drivers both in floppies and hard disk as a dump for future use. The drivers could include CD ROM driver, VGA card, sound card etc. Regarding the back up of your data files (user files) always use some compression utility like MSBackup or WinZip as it reduces the size of your total back considerably.

Another thing, which is required to be taken a back up periodically is your registry. A back up of your registry could come very handy if your operating system crashes, as this back up of registry could then be restored to revive your operating system. The registry changes and updates itself every time a program is being installed or uninstalled, or changes are being made to your hardware, etc.; sometimes the Registry corrupts itself in the course of its job, and needs to be restored. Thus, a copy of your registry could really save from a lot of botheration. In this regard you must take a recent copy of two Registry files, SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT present on your C: drive. You can use these files in case your Registry gets corrupted or you get any kind of Registry error message.

The procedure for restoring these registry files is very simple. The first step is to restart Windows in MS-DOS mode by pressing F8 before the "Starting Windows 98..." message appears, and select Safe Mode from the menu. Switch to the directory where the backup files exist or run them from the floppy drive containing the back up copy of the registry. Run RU.EXE file from the Emergency Recovery Disk, and your Registry will be restored. Another way for restoring the Registry is from Windows's own backup copy.

In this case shut down the computer and choose Restart in MS-DOS mode from the shutdown menu. Now from DOS Prompt, change to the directory, where Windows is installed for example CD\ WINDOWS. Now enter the following commands, pressing Enter after each one. Also please make sure to choose yes when you are prompted to overwrite SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT.

After you finish, simply restart your computer.

The commands are

ATTRIB -H -R -S SYSTEM.*

COPY SYSTEM .DAT SYSTEM.BAK

COPY SYSTEM.DA0 SYSTEM.DAT

ATTRIB -H -R -S USER.*

COPY USER.DAT USER.BAK

COPY USER.DA0 USER.DAT

ATTRIB +H +R +S SYSTEM.DA?

ATTRIB +H +R +S USER.*

Now, by doing this your USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT files are being restored and which corrects your registry.

However, if your registry is very large and needs some trimming, then you can use software like RegClean, which is a Microsoft utility, available at support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/RegClean.exe as a direct download. This program cleans up your registry and makes your system more stable by removing unnecessary entries. Periodic use of RegClean software may also reduce the number of illegal operation faults etc. you may be getting.