Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Do you backup your important files?

A useful software tool for Windows XP users

If you have important data on your computer, whether it is of a personal or professional nature, you need to do regular backups of it. Think about how painful it would be for you if you lost that data and you'll quickly realize how important your backups are.

I recently heard about a nifty little software utility that is available FREE from Microsoft. It's called SyncToy, and you must have Windows XP (with service pack 2 installed) to use it. SyncToy can be used to easily do backups of many kinds, whether it's between your hard drive and a flash drive, or from a memory stick, or whatever. Even if you use an external hard drive for backups, this tool can help you. It can be customized to do several different types of backups based on a one- way or two-way comparison of your files.

Check out SyncToy and let me know if it helps you. I've found it extremely useful and very easy to get set up for the first time. It has greatly reduced my backup worries and it's much faster than doing a full copy of all the folders and files every time.

Download SyncToy here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en