Has your computer’s hard drive been lost or infected by a virus, preventing your Windows operating system from booting up? Do you have any tools that can help you quickly recover your data?
Sadly, the reality is that by the time we pay attention to these issues, it is often too late. However, we can still prepare to deal with such disasters by learning methods to protect our most valuable asset on our computers—the hard drive.
Simple Yet Effective
Are you sure you can recover your emails, reports, or anything else important once your hard drive fails? How long will it take to reinstall the operating system and essential applications?
The only guaranteed way to avoid data loss in such situations is to regularly back up your data to another storage device, such as a second hard drive on your computer.
You can still apply this method while using data backup utilities like the Windows application. Unfortunately, the Windows backup application does not support writing data to CD or DVD, even though Windows Explorer has this feature. The solution is to back up all data into a single file and then use a disc burning application to write it to a CD or DVD.
However, you must ensure that you clearly understand the process of backing up and restoring data. It is best to use a consistent application for both backup and recovery.
As another backup method, you can use Symantec’s Norton Ghost software to back up your entire hard drive into a single “image” file, which can then be written to a CD, DVD, or any other storage device. Another advantage is that Ghost can clone and restore your operating system, applications, and specific settings, saving you time during the recovery process.
Data Protection through Encryption
Do you have sensitive information that you do not want others to access? Using different user accounts in Windows is a useful method.
Using a password-protected user account to log into your system is a good approach, but it’s not entirely secure. Others may still be able to bypass the password or install another operating system on your computer, easily accessing your data.
The solution to this problem is to use the data encryption feature available in Windows XP—note that this feature only applies to NTFS-formatted drives. Right-click on any folder or file, select Properties, switch to Advanced, and check Encrypt. This way, only you will be able to read the encrypted data. To decrypt this data, simply repeat the process but check Decrypt instead of Encrypt.
Part II: Skills for Protecting Your Hard Drive and Data
HVD – (PCmag)