Top Seven Things I need to make sure I am backing up

• Personal Data (My Documents, My Pictures, My Videos)
  • Unless you are still using notebooks, leather bound photo albums and VHS tapes, there are probably quite a few documents, pictures and movies on your computer that would be lost in the case of a hard drive failure. Many of these images, moving and not, probably represent once in a lifetime moments and, lets face it, even if you could recreate all the documents stored on your computer, you wouldn't want to. Creating a regular backup is the best way to safeguard all of your important memories and information.
    
    
• Business Data (Customer Information, Financial Records)
  • Businesses, regardless of their size, rely on the unique data they create. This can include customer contact information, accounting databases, legal documents and a variety of other documents specific to the business.
    
    
• My System State
  • When you perform a backup and include the system state, the information the OS includes in the backup will vary depending on the type and state of the machine. The following table lists the elements the OS backs up:
    
    

    Element to be Backed up	Domain Controller	Non-Domain Controller
    Active Directory (NTDS)	Yes	No
    System Volume (SYSVOL)	Yes	No
    Boot files	Yes	Yes
    Registry	Yes	Yes
    COM+ class registration database	Yes	Yes

    
    
• My Email
  • Honestly, this should just be obvious.  If you have a hosted email account through gmail or hotmail you're just fine.  But if you're using Outlook or Thunderbird than you better be sure you're backing that up because if your computer goes 'poot' then your email is going with it.
    
    
• My Registry
  • The registry is that the average user will never lay a hand on; however, the average program uses the registry quite frequently.  So when you're setting up your backup be sure that you're getting the regsitry as well.  Best advice:  Backing up the system state gets the registry too, so that's what we suggest.
    
    
• My Internet Explorer or FireFox settings
  • Not the most important thing in the world if we lose it, but a HUGE pain in the tushy.  Some people have tons of favorites and such and recreating all of them is a hassle easily avoided.
    
    
• My Drivers
  • So often overlooked.  First of all, what is a driver?  It's a program that tells your computer how to communicate with other devices.  Whether it be your printer, your network card, your video card or even your mouse.  You'll need these when your computer crashes and you're reloading XP or if you're loading your data on a new computer.  Having your drivers will save you time when you're doing this.