Page 31 - Computer Basics- Student Textbook

If you have a backup of your files in another location, if your hard drive fails, you can always install a new one, then
copy those files back to your new drive. You have not lost anything. However, if you do not have another copy of
your important files, you could be looking at a major disaster.

Here are some important considerations about backing up your files.

1. Make sure the backup files are in a removed location. Should a fire burn up your main computer, you certainly
want to make sure a house file cannot burn up your backups.

2. Make sure you faithfully back up all important files. If you don’t care about losing a file, then don’t back it up.
But if that file is important (it is a project you have worked two weeks on), you had better have a backup copy on
another disk or flash drive. Be safe rather than sorry!

3. Don’t backup your files over your old backup files. I was administrator of a school where we backed up all files
daily. The problem is the files were backed up over the older files. Our computer crashed, but before it did, the
files we were backing up were damaged and useless. So, in the process of backing up our files, we backed up
contaminated files over our good backups. By the time we discovered the problem, all our backups were
destroyed. We lost an entire year’s data (financial, grades, transcripts, etc.). It was a major disaster!!!

4. Have rotational backups. Have five flash drives, and label them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday. On Monday, backup to the Monday drive, and so on. If you somehow contaminated a day, you will only
lose one day’s work, because you can go back to the previous day’s backup.

Computer Basics: Connecting to the internet

4.4 Let’s Practice…

1. What is the difference between logging off a computer and shutting down a computer?

2. Explain what the internet is.

3. What are the programs called that help you find something on the internet?

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