In the real world, no matter how competent our anti-virus and malware protection is, there will come a day when something goes wrong and believe me, it will!
Our last line of defence is having a copy or copies of our data saved somewhere else than on our computer's hard disk only.
The hard disk in our computer is a piece of hardware that is a highly precision manufactured piece of hardware.
If you feel like reading more and seeing what your hard disk looks like from the inside, you can visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive.
A hard disk is just a set of reading heads resting on a small aluminum or glass substrate or titanium platters (disks) that are coated with a magnetic medium of a cobalt-based alloy that records/saves our files as 1's and 0's.
These platters (on a normal hard disk) spin between 5,400 and 10,000 RPM.
These start rotating when you turn your PC on and stop when you turn it off; they never stop spinning, unless you set them to.
Hard disks are so sensitive that air flow inside the actual unit of the drive is what holds the heads of the platters off while the drive is on.
The rotation of the platters creates an air flow. The heads fly like an airplane on this cushion of air. The air is dragged along with the platters by friction. The high pressure air between the heads and platters form what is called an air bearing.
The designed distance between the heads and platters is called the flying height. It can literally measure to a few millionths of an inch. A good analogy is to try to imagine flying a Boeing 747 about six inches above ground level.
OK, enough tech-talk. I just wanted to make you aware of what you trust your data on, and how easily things can go wrong.
This doesn't mean that your hard disk is unreliable. I know of hard disks that have been going for over five years, 24 hours a day and never had a problem but this doesn't mean that yours won't!
So what we have to do is copy our data to another medium for safe keeping.
To do this efficiently we need to organise ourselves into keeping everything in its place.
This will help reduce the time spent when we decide to make a back-up of our files.
This process is considered by some as a waste of time which could be used for something more useful, and it is!
So, by organising the way we file things we can reduce the time taken and increase the chances of a successful back-up.
After all, you don't want to accidently lose a file and go look for it in your back-up and find that it's not there, do you?
First, we need to decide on a file structure, which means creating folders that will contain data/files that are important, thus needing a back-up, and others that do not.
For example, you might have a folder of pictures from your last holiday, you do not need to back this every time because nothing ever changes in them, but we want it on our hard disk for some reason.
We copy these pictures on a CD/DVD and then exclude it from our normal back-up.
Next time I will explain different types of back-up strategies and, hopefully, from this information, you will be able to choose which one is best suited for your needs.
• Mr Marshall, a certified computer programmer and technician, will be giving tips on i-Tech on how to make the best and safest use of computers. He can be contacted at noelmarshall.itech@gmail.com.
Our last line of defence is having a copy or copies of our data saved somewhere else than on our computer's hard disk only.
The hard disk in our computer is a piece of hardware that is a highly precision manufactured piece of hardware.
If you feel like reading more and seeing what your hard disk looks like from the inside, you can visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive.
A hard disk is just a set of reading heads resting on a small aluminum or glass substrate or titanium platters (disks) that are coated with a magnetic medium of a cobalt-based alloy that records/saves our files as 1's and 0's.
These platters (on a normal hard disk) spin between 5,400 and 10,000 RPM.
These start rotating when you turn your PC on and stop when you turn it off; they never stop spinning, unless you set them to.
Hard disks are so sensitive that air flow inside the actual unit of the drive is what holds the heads of the platters off while the drive is on.
The rotation of the platters creates an air flow. The heads fly like an airplane on this cushion of air. The air is dragged along with the platters by friction. The high pressure air between the heads and platters form what is called an air bearing.
The designed distance between the heads and platters is called the flying height. It can literally measure to a few millionths of an inch. A good analogy is to try to imagine flying a Boeing 747 about six inches above ground level.
OK, enough tech-talk. I just wanted to make you aware of what you trust your data on, and how easily things can go wrong.
This doesn't mean that your hard disk is unreliable. I know of hard disks that have been going for over five years, 24 hours a day and never had a problem but this doesn't mean that yours won't!
So what we have to do is copy our data to another medium for safe keeping.
To do this efficiently we need to organise ourselves into keeping everything in its place.
This will help reduce the time spent when we decide to make a back-up of our files.
This process is considered by some as a waste of time which could be used for something more useful, and it is!
So, by organising the way we file things we can reduce the time taken and increase the chances of a successful back-up.
After all, you don't want to accidently lose a file and go look for it in your back-up and find that it's not there, do you?
First, we need to decide on a file structure, which means creating folders that will contain data/files that are important, thus needing a back-up, and others that do not.
For example, you might have a folder of pictures from your last holiday, you do not need to back this every time because nothing ever changes in them, but we want it on our hard disk for some reason.
We copy these pictures on a CD/DVD and then exclude it from our normal back-up.
Next time I will explain different types of back-up strategies and, hopefully, from this information, you will be able to choose which one is best suited for your needs.
• Mr Marshall, a certified computer programmer and technician, will be giving tips on i-Tech on how to make the best and safest use of computers. He can be contacted at noelmarshall.itech@gmail.com.