The Security Mentor

Just back up your data.

Backups are a versatile security technique. In one step they can protect you against theft, fire, hardware failures, user error, and destructive viruses.

If you're running a Windows machine you're stuck with an annoying amount of work finding the data you need to back up. You'll start with the My Documents folder, of course. But then you'll discover that all your Outlook email is in a folder with a name like "C:\Documents and Settings\me\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft Outlook". A friend of mine who spent years as a Microsoft programmer faithfully backed up his My Documents folder but then lost years of email and his whole address book in a disk crash because he didn't know where Outlook was storing it all. Your browser bookmarks, if you're still using Internet Explorer, are in "C:\Documents and Settings\me\Favorites".

So maybe you want to copy all of "Documents and Settings" someplace to back it up, but that doesn't cover everything because some programs (Quicken, for example) like to write data into the same folder where the program is installed.

But you don't want to back up the whole computer, not very often. Most of it doesn't change and you're better off if you can fit your data backup onto a writable CD.

The best I can come up with is to make a list of the things you do every week (email, Quicken, and so on) and figure out where your computer is storing the data. Then make a routine of burning a CD with the data.

Backing up the operating system and the programs you use is a different kind of problem. For that I refer you to The Elder Geek, a web site full of wisdom and step-by-step instructions.