Organizing Your Computer and Computer Files

First of all, my apologies for not getting out a newsletter the past two weeks. Due to a power outage, my computer crashed. I’m finally getting things back in order, minus a few programs and such!

So that brings me to today’s post on organizing your computer.

What would you do if your computer crashed?

Here are some tips from my experience.

A previous computer tech had installed a second hard drive in my computer. I had fairly regularly backed up my files to that second drive. It’s a good thing I did, as those files were all okay.

But this did make me aware of how easy it can be to lose your files and information, so now I am also looking at some other options.

One of those is to get an external hard drive as an additional back up system. Easier than trying to burn a whole bunch of DVD’s – although that would be better than nothing.

Another is to use a service called Dropbox. This is an online file storage system that sets up on your computer, but syncs your files to an external storage system. You can sign up and get 2 GB of file space for free (or more if you want to pay a fee) and whatever you place on Dropbox you can also access from any other computer. That way if your computer goes down, you can still access all the files you have on that system. Check it out here at Dropbox.

Something else to consider. When you install programs on your computer, make sure you keep the original discs or files. If you’re downloading software and programs from the internet, when the window comes up that asks if you want to Run or Save this file, first Save it to a Programs folder of your own, then open that file and Run it. That way you have the backup file to reinstall it if needed. I’d been doing that with some of my recent programs, but I lost a fair number of earlier ones. Thankfully most of them aren’t that serious, but still, it is a loss that I could have done without. So from now on I will be making sure I have a copy of any installation files I need.

It is rather nice that most companies nowadays will allow you to get program files as downloads from their websites. Program downloads are available for printers, scanners and so on.

Do make sure that you are using a battery backup for all your computer stuff. My backup battery died and I hadn’t gotten around to getting another one – and when the power went out this time, it crashed my computer. Not sure why this time, because it had done it before and nothing had happened, but this time I got caught. Won’t do that again!

One thing this episode has also done is to give me a chance to do some cleaning out and reorganizing of my own files. I have to admit that with the extra backup space on that second hard drive, I’d been rather slack about filing them properly – I just dumped them there to make sure I had them. So I’ve now cleaned that out and organized it more usefully.

So here’s to being prepared and hoping you never have your computer crash!