Thumb Drive for Regular Backups

"Thumb drives," also known as "flash drives," are very inexpensive and plug into any available USB port on your computer. They're very small, about the size of a mini-Bic lighter. I don't have a lot of important files to back up, but I learned that frequent backups matter. During last July's heatwave, my old hard drive was fried.

How I do it:

• I have the "up side" of my thumb drive marked, so it's easy to insert it correctly. When the box pops up asking what to do since there are a variety of files stored on the same drive, I choose "take no action" and click "okay."
• I navigate to my main documents folder and highlight the files and/or folders I know I've worked with since the last backup. I also periodically back up the whole document folder.
• I copy these highlighted files and navigate to my "F" drive, which is my thumb drive.
• If I'm doing a regular backup, I simply paste the files and folders I just copied. If a box pops up asking if I want to replace previous versions I've already got stored on the drive, I always choose "yes to all."
• If I'm doing a "deep backup," I highlight and delete everything from the thumb drive before copying and pasting my files to it.

What I back up:

• The entire My Documents folder from my computer's main drive. (This drive will be called "local hard drive," and will most likely be labeled "C".
• My Inbox from my Microsoft Outlook program.
• My email contacts from my Outlook program.
• My Outlook calendar.
• My Internet Explorer Favorites folder.

There you have it. The quick-and-easy outline for backing up your important files to a thumb drive! Please let me know if you don't know how to back up your email or internet favorites. I'll try to explain it.

Source: Things I've learned along the way.

By Lelia Jo Cordell from Springfield, OH