Golden Words of Backup GeekSpeak from the Cap'n

Back Up There - - - -

And then the boss lady stuck her head through the E-Mail door and said, "Hey gang, we're going to do a special issue on backing up your computers. Anybody have a problem with that?"

Heck no, I thought, couldn't be any worse than trying to get peanut butter off the roof of your mouth with your thumb. So what's the big deal?

To back up a computer all you have to do is pry it up around the edges to break the surface tension caused by having it sitting in one place stuck to the top of your desk by all that spilled soda and stuff, then place a hand firmly on each side and push away from you. Simple. Nothing to it. It's a snap. Anyone can do it…………… Say What Linda? Yes Ma'am, right away.

Truth be known, for some people backing up the contents of their hard drive, or just the accumulation of the day's important data, is like falling off a log. No Problem.

'Cept for me the logs I fall off of always tend to be just a little taller than average.

Nice guy that I am, I will now attempt to assist you in avoiding some of the standard Log-falling-off pitfalls. Here are a few definitions of terms normally associated with the @#%"§*&ing process.

Backup - Just that, you find all that precious stuff you've been working on all day, plus a couple of those naughty JPGs you received, and transfer a copy of them to a different partition, or a different medium like a floppy disk (do they still use those things?) or a CD-ROM while being very careful to remember where you put them.

All you doubting Thomases keep this in your dubious little minds, if you don't make a practice of backing up your important data on a regular basis, the time will come when you will wish to heck you had.

Copy - Straight definition? It's a duplicate of the original. How do you make a copy? When I was a kid we used tracing paper but those days are down the tubes. Now you have to find all that important info, highlight it (you know how to do that don't you) then you can hit "Ctrl C" to copy it to the clipboard while you look for a place to put it, and when you find that place click on "Ctrl V" to paste it in your new location and "Voila!" you have made a copy.

Or, if it's in a folder or highlighted, right click on it, and when the dropdown menu appears, click on "Copy." Then open the new location, right click in it and on the drop-down menu, click "Paste." However, if you are fortunate enough to have a secretary or an assistant let them do it. What the heck, you're too darned important to have to fool with such trivial stuff anyway.

Fdisk - I have known people who, lacking a formal definition of "Fdisk" have displayed a propensity for providing the term with a somewhat obscene connotation. Having been forced to use it on numerous occasions, I find that perfectly acceptable.

Fdisk is the name given to a utility integral to both DOS and Windows which may be used to create one primary partition on a hard drive in order to prepare the drive for formatting. Once the disk is formatted, all of its available space may be used for backing up all that data.

Format - Most of us, when first getting involved with these machines learn how to "format" a floppy, and with natural progression of time, once we have managed to really foul up a hard disk, The intrepid newbie in us all says, "What the hey?" It's just a big sealed-up floppy, so we format the darned thing.

In so doing we truly believe that we have erased all the previous information and now have a blank disk to play with. NOT! All you have erased is the FAT (File Allocation Table).  It tells the computer where to look for a given file. That is the result of the physical act of re-formatting a hard disk and I only mention it because, if you ever mess up, as I once did, you can get hold of a really good tech and he'll be able to reclaim most if not all of your lost data for you. Contrary to many popular opinions, techs really are good for some things. (Ouch)

Ghost® - BOOOO! Nope, nothing to do with Halloween, Ghost® is the name of a Symantec software utility with the capability of converting all of the info on a hard drive into an image and saving it to a different partition, a different drive, or even burn it to a CD. I'm not touting Ghost®, there are others out there just as good, but it doesn't take a "geek" to see the advantages in using a ghosting utility for backing up a file, a folder, a partition, or your whole darned drive.

Partition - A segment of hard drive designated as a virtual drive and bearing it's own little drive letter. Like if your primary active partition is named "C" then the first partition in your extended partition is going to be called "D" and the next one will be "E", unless you are one of those people who have two or more hard rives in their computer and ain't no way I'm going to mess with that one right now.

Restore - There's a brain-buster for ya. It means to put back what you took out of where-ever you took it out of. The trick is to get it back in there in working condition. No big deal if you put that ghost image on a floppy, a partition, another hard drive, or a CD. Copy it back where it came from or to wherever you want it to go and

 --------------------- Son of a gun, you've just done a backup and restore.

Check out more of the Cap'n's fun daffynitions at his GeekSpeak Translator page.

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