• Backup Practices
  • Backup Bookmarks
  • Backup Software
  • Data Loss & Theft
  • External Drives
  • Online Backup
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • Website Backups

FileSlinger Backup Blog

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • E-zine
  • Questions?
  • Review Policy
  • Comment Policy
  • Disclosures

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 02-10-06: Re-establishing Backups

February 10, 2006 by Sallie Goetsch Leave a Comment

I reinstalled my computer last weekend in the hopes of eliminating some peculiar and fairly serious system errors. Since it wasn’t a case of total system failure, I had plenty of time to back up my files before starting.

Every time I reinstall my machine, there are new things to back up beforehand and restore afterwards. My big new things for this machine were the newsreader that lets me get blog posts in Outlook, the podcatcher that downloads MP3 files for me, and Skype.

Two out of three isn’t bad. I successfully exported the subscription lists for Newsgator and Juice, but it never crossed my mind to specifically back up my Skype contact list. It had never even occurred to me to wonder where Skype stored my contacts and other information, apart from on its own database online. I’ve now exported my Skype contact list to a file on my external drive. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to automate that backup, but if I put Skype names into Outlook, I can always retrieve them from there.

Once I’d gotten my data restored, I had to configure my file backup system. I do back up the settings I use for Karen’s Replicator, the terrific free file backup/sync program I use, but since I was changing my directory structure with the reinstall, the old settings weren’t going to work.

Here’s the list I came up with:

  • Audio files
  • Author-izer docs
  • FileSlinger docs
  • Firefox Bookmarks
  • Icons
  • Mind Maps
  • Outlook PST files
  • Passwords
  • Personal docs
  • Pictures
  • Quicken data
  • Templates
Those are the files I back up every time I start up and most times I shut down the computer. (I can set Replicator to run automatically at startup, but not to run automatically at shutdown, so I have to remember to run the jobs before shutdown.)

These are the things I can back up automatically, and the things it would be difficult or impossible to re-create. Other things, like Outlook rules, Word settings, Newsgator subscriptions, and Skype contacts, have to be exported and backed up manually.

And macros. I’m still trying to figure out where and how macros get stored so I can back those up.

One thing is abundantly clear, however: the better the backups, the quicker and more complete the restoration.

Which files do you back up daily?

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Backup Practices, Backup Software Tagged With: Karen's Replicator, Skype

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Google Ads

Categories

  • Announcements
  • Archiving
  • Backup Bookmarks
  • Backup Devices
  • Backup Practices
  • Backup Software
  • CD & DVD Backups
  • Data Loss & Theft
  • Data Recovery
  • Drive Failure
  • Drive Imaging
  • E-mail Backups
  • Events
  • External Drives
  • Flash Drives
  • Guest Bloggers
  • Hardware Failure
  • Humor
  • Mac Backups
  • Mobile Backup
  • Network Storage
  • Offsite Backups
  • Online Backup
  • RAID
  • Removable Drives
  • Reviews
  • Storage
  • Tape Backup
  • Traveling Backups
  • Tutorials
  • Website Backups

Tags

Elsewhere

  • BACN
  • East Bay WordPress Meetup
  • Rhymes with Sketch
  • The Author-izer
  • WP Fangirl

Find Sallie Online

Backup Poll

When was the last time you backed up your computer?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
  • Polls Archive

Tags

.MAC Acronis Amazon S3 annual archive backup Backup Bookmarks BACN Bart-PE Buffalo carbon copy cloner Carbonite CloudBerry Cloud Computing Coding Horror CrashPlan disaster recovery Dmailer DriveImage DriveSavers Dropbox DVD Flickr Ghost Google Docs Iron Mountain Karen's Replicator LinkedIn LiveVault Maxtor Memeo Mozy RAID Rebit reminder Retrospect Seagate social backup Spare Backup SyncBack SyncBack Freeware Titan Backup WordPress XHD year-end backup Zoogmo

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in