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Back Breaker

© Brian Hughes

Doesn't it drive you nuts when you follow all the good advice and do the right thing?

Always keep copies of critical files in a backup folder... yep.

Keep extra copies if only on floppy disks... yep. Close to 1.5 mgs of storage space used to be a reasonable amount of room but it doesn't go very far now!!!

Power off the system when there's thunder and lightning around... yep.

Everything hooked up to a good quality power bar, including the telephone line... yep.

Get a sense of what led up to this article?

Beautiful sunny day... not a cloud in the sky. Suddenly everything electrical flickers for a fraction of a second and I'm looking at a blank screen. Re-start the system and all the hardware seems ok... that's a relief. Oh well, back to Win98 and what I was working on... eh, where's Windows?

I won't bore you with all the messages that passed before my eyes, many completely new to me. It didn't take much figuring out that I was heading towards a re-install but then these things do happen and it's been a while... What justifies this weeks title is that it also took little time to see that the drive was going to have to be re-formatted first.

Off into the sunset go my mail, bookmarks, favourites... at least all my article drafts are uploaded onto S101... that's something. A few hours later I have a beautifully clean C:\ drive and a pristine copy of Win98 all ready for me. A few days later I also have my software back in place... all that I wanted anyway.

The exercise set me thinking. What else could I do to speed things up if, and when, it happens again? What more backing up can I do short of the last resort? The latter refers to spending money, it's the principle of it so forget about zip drives, jazz drives, CDR drives and even a UPS (uninterruptable power supply). One of these days I will get around to networking mine and Dee's system together, but we still only have the one electricity supply.

How about using one of these freebee Web based back up services?

FreeBack is the one that caught my eye for a number of reasons. 50 mgs. of storage space is about the most you can get for free at the moment and their site says all the right things. Registration is very simple... a few personal demographic questions but fewer than most and I was soon copying what I wanted to where it should be... off site.