Backing_Up_Files

=The Importance of Backing Up Files=

As many of us have discovered (myself included) computers have a tendency to go wrong from time to time and there are many opportunities to lose important data. In addition to hardware failure or an accidental user error, please also consider some unexpected, but common risks such as dropping, theft, power failure (including lightning strikes), and damage due to other natural disasters. We may not be able to prevent some of these events, but we can minimize the damages by backing up information on a regular basis. The two most convenient options for doing this are to use a portable USB drive or to save ("burn") files to a CD-R or DVD-R.



You may often need to back up more files than you can fit on a single piece of storage media (such as a CD-R). When this is the case, you may spread the files across multiple discs, but be sure that you note the original location so that you can restore them later. For example, if you had 600 MB in the Music folder but only 300 MB of other files, you could burn one CD-R of your music and put all other files on a second disc.


 * //One [|CD-R] typically holds around 700 megabytes. One [|DVD-R] can hold around 4.7 gigabytes.//

To see the size of an individual file or the amount stored in a folder, select the file or folder in the Finder, then choose ‘Get Info’ from the File menu.



Regardless of which method you choose, please consider backing up regularly to avoid or lessen any headaches.