How-to Backup Your Computer!

What do you do if your hard drive is wearing out?

Yes, you need to back it up as soon as possible; it would be best if you did it regularly as a matter of course. You and I may both know that but when we are so busy with our daily activities, we end up putting it off so long that IF our hard drive should give up and die, we would be mourning all the stuff we had there, and no where else!

Unless you have a photographic memory with perfect recall of every word, image, etc., in your documents and files. Duh!!

(I KNOW THIS; still I have put it off so long that I am in real danger of such a crash!)

Last week I took my computer in to complain of not enough RAM, but the man at the Service desk said he would be more worried about my hard drive. It was old and might need to be replaced soon. I promised him cheerfully that I would back up that hard drive soon, knowing that my last full backup had been more than a year ago. (April of 2023).

Well, in the last few days my computer box seems to be constantly churning and growling through many Gigabytes of files. Yesterday I started my backup but that is a two-day job! It is not done yet, but I hope to get the last of my websites work to be backed up, and then a final re-backup of saved emails before I pack it up tomorrow morning to go on a couple of errands and ask the techs at Memory Express to put in that new SSD hard drive for me. (I can't see any bay for it, so they may have to install that first.)

Are you in panic mode now, realizing you've NEVER done a backup before? Let me try to simplify the steps.

1. You need to get a backup drive first; small ones with Terabytes of room on them, and a cord to plug into your USB port. (I suggest you create a folder with the current date on it - because you want room for more backups in the future.)

2. Plug it in, split your file manager program in half with one half where you dock or connect your backup drive. Open the folder you created with the current date.

3. In the other half of the file manager go to your Home folder, and see all the folders inside that. Those are the files you have created and want to back up. Simply drag the folders one or two at a time, (depending on the size) over to be inside that dated folder.

4. Note: you can do some small tasks in another window, but do not work with the files being copied to the backup drive at the moment. That screws things up. eg. If you are working in documents do not back up that folder until you are done.

5. You should also check on the backup process for sometimes the system will pop up a warning that some of your files have symbols in the names that cannot be saved, however, it offers to change them to underlines __ for you. Agree to that. Your file will be okay, but the name may have underscores in it.

When it seems to be done, double-check for missed files by opening the same folder on both sides, the backup drive and the hard drive. Count/compare the file names to see if any were NOT copied over. Try doing them one at a time. If they refuse to copy, consider if you need to print out that file so you have copy, or can you let it go bye-bye?

If your hard drive needs to be destroyed, make sure you do not give it away, or leave it in a resale place. Some hacker will find a way into it and get a lot of your personal ID from it. Then you will be scammed from every direction for the rest of your life!

You might try reformatting that hard drive so it is blank. Time consuming but the best idea I have to offer.

P.S. Oh yes, when you get a new hard drive you will need the backup drive to copy all your files back. But, you need to install a new "system" on that new drive first. A fresh copy of your old system if you were attached to it. Or, if brave, try a new system and learn lots of new things! My Fav is Leap 15.5 and has been a number of years.

[Back to Archives Index ] ~~ [Back to Main RoseBouquet Page]