Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Backing Up Your Data

Stop. Take a moment and think about the information you store on your computer. Consider the amount of time you spend creating, updating, and maintaining your Web site. Now imagine that all that information disappears in a blink of the eye. Yikes!

Most of us go through our business day assuming that nothing really bad will ever happen. That's followed by the assumption that the contents of your Web site and your computer files are perfectly safe and always at your disposal. Guess again. You can lose data through human error (coffee splashed on your laptop, for example) or natural disasters, such as hurricanes.

You can prevent disasters from becoming cataclysmic by properly backing up and storing your data. Try these methods:

• Store data on a removable storage device. A common way to back up data is to save it to an external hard drive. You can also use a flash drive, as long as it has enough memory.
• Partition your hard drive. An easy way to back up files is to move them to a separate section of your hard drive. You do this by partitioning the hard drive, or dividing it into two or more sections. If one partition is corrupted or compromised, you can still access the second partition.

  To partition your existing hard drive, use an off-the-shelf program to make the job easy. Try the Partition Commander 11 from Avanquest Software for $49.95 at www.avanquest.com — type partition commander 11 in the Search box near the top of the page.

  One goal of backing up data ...