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Tech Talk Tuesday is a new feature on The Zen Introvert. March’s theme is backing up your website, home computer, and your individual posts.
Dependence on Technology
A lot of us depend on our computers to manage our finances, run our businesses, keep our homes organized, and to entertain us.
In my PB (Pre-Blog) years having a failure on my home computer was annoying but not crippling. Now that I have a blog, oh it’s still annoying to have a failure but now it would slow my business down considerably but still not enough to make things come to a complete stop.
PhotoMIX-Company / Pixabay
Why? Good backup hygiene! Having a good set of backups not only on your blog but on your home computer doubles your peace of mind that you’re protected from many kinds of issues.
Prior posts in this series are:
Tech Talk Tuesday – Backing Up Your Work 101 where we go into the perfect back up strategy to get you started and give you peace of mind.
Tech Talk Tuesday – Website and Blog Backups, the nuts and bots of how to back up your database, files, and emails.
Easy Follow Along Instructions
Windows has a built-in utility to backup your files. Set it once, then forget it. Well, set it once but keep checking up on it once in awhile to see if it’s still working properly.
You access this utility through the Control Panel. Now, I’m a Windows 10 user, but I really dislike the interface to update settings for most things. Backups most of all. The interface is too friendly. I almost snorted my soda through my nose watching the Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon says: “My new computer came with Windows 7. Windows 7 is much more user-friendly than Windows Vista. I don’t like that.”. That’s exactly the way I am with Windows 10 over Windows 7!
The good news is that you can still access the old Control Panel on Windows 10. For you Windows 7 users, simply click on your start button and choose Control Panel from the right-hand side of the popup. For Windows 10 users, type Control Panel in the Cortana (or Search box), click it, and we’re on our way!
Performing a Simple Backup
- When you get to the Control Panel, choose the System and Security Control Panel
- Then scroll down to Backup and Restore (Windows 7) and click it. The old control panel gives you the Windows 7 interface to your backup and restore utility. Much easier to use and you have more control if you wish to only back up a few files or specific folders.
- You’ll now see the panel that says Backup or Restore your files.
- As you can see, the backups are set to run once a week on Sunday at 3:00 a.m. and I sincerely hope that I’m never up that early working.
- The restore function is at the bottom of the screen. One stop shopping!
- On this panel you can also manage the space on your backup media should you need to delete old backups. I keep about six months worth though I don’t have to go in and delete very often.
- Click Change Settings.
- The first screen that opens is the location window. This window shows you all the media connected to your computer.
- I highly recommend that you use removable media; thumb drive, external hard drive, or a re-writable CD or DVD. Of those, the external hard drive is the easiest to administer.
- Click Next.
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- The next screen only has two choices on it. For ease of use, click “Let Windows Choose” and don’t worry about the second choice at all. The first option backs up everything and as a bonus, it makes a system image for you. A system image is a full point in time image of your entire machine, not just the files. This recovery image is useful should your whole machine have a catastrophic failure.
- The second option allows you to pick and choose what you would like to back up and can also include a system image.
- Click Next.
- The next thing you’ll see is a summary screen of what the system is backing up. There’s also a place to establish or change your backup schedule.
- I recommend weekly backups unless you’re spending all day creating on your PC or laptop, then go with daily backups at a time when you’re not working.
- The only thing left to do is click ‘Save Settings and Exit’.
Congrats!
You’re set! That was easy! Your backups will run at the time specified every week and give you a lot of peace of mind. You can also run a backup at any time using the Backup Now button on the right upper side of the Backup and Restore screen. Back up now follows all the parameters that you set for the automagic backups.
So, that’s it for this week! Next week we’ll look at making a system repair disc for your home computer.
Go out and have Fun with Tech!
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