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Most people who use personal computers are well aware now of the importance of having virus protection on their PC.   This process of helping people do a better job of protecting their systems is increased now by computer manufacturers delivering new PCs with virus protection software preloaded.  That certainly takes care of the virus issue.  What about the rest of your security concerns?

While most people are not really up to speed on this issue some have learned the hard way that backing up your system and your data files is absolutely critical to finishing the security portfolio on your PC.  Doing a file backup is nothing new to PCs.  In fact this process has been performed in most corporate environments with high-level auto-copy software that is ‘smart’.  This means the software scans your system nightly and copies/replaces any file that is new or updated as compared to what is on file on the main server.   This kind of central backup replaces every file that is new or changed.   This process is called “versioning” and it is long overdue.

The way that most personal users of computers back up their files is on CD.  This is very easily accomplished since these files now store 4.8G of data and they are highly reliable.  Since most newer PCs have CD or CD/DVD drives this technology is well within the reach of almost all users.  The caveat is that this is a manual operation requiring personal scheduling and discipline.

The next step up from this level of data security is to execute a hard drive total backup.  This is a drive backup not a selective backup of files or directories.  The issue here and the caveat to a decision to go to this next step is that properly done, a backup strategy with a drive copy process requires an additional drive 50% larger than the drive being backed up and it takes an hour to execute properly.  This places the entire contents – as is – on a secondary drive.  This is really a step up  from the burning of CDs.   There are some operating issues but it is overall a pretty easy to accomplish data security strategy. There are minor operating issues involving use of the alternate drive in standard PC operation.

The final option that is getting very good press these days is the backup/restore online service.  It is an online data security and backup service.   There are standard and upgrade versions of this service in most cases.   The upgraded subscription performs the versioning that allows for the copy/backup action to be executed only when new or altered versions of files are detected.

There are custom services and other kinds of alternate drives, but the three concepts mentioned here are the primary ones.   The most important thing is to use something.  Data is often more precious than gold.

Remember to maintain and backup your system registry.  You can get  registry software that performs the maintenance, backup and other registry fix functions that should occur weekly.  They will also accomplish the needed Registry Repair and maintenance function as well.