BackUp Procedures

What's the difference between peace of mind and a headache? Backup. If you have ever experienced that sickening feeling when you lose any or all of your hard work because of technical problems, you may have already learned the valuable lesson of backup. For those of us who have yet to experience the phenomenon, we offer the antidote. Read on:

What do we mean when we say "backup"?
Backup is the process by which you make a copy of your work for safekeeping in an alternate location, in case your current work becomes lost or corrupt. The backup copy is only as recent as the last time it was modified. The more work you do, the more frequently you should back up your work.

What is the best way to backup your work?
There is more than one way to backup your work. Following are examples:

Save a copy of your work on an alternate folder or storage medium, such as a Zip disk, tape drive, floppy diskette* or network drive. a) In the Windows Explorer, select the file you wish to backup

• Click once on Edit from the menu bar
• Click once on Copy from the pull-down menu
• Navigate to the alternate drive or folder
• Click once on Edit from the menu bar
• Click once on Paste from the pull-down menu

Save a copy of your work with a different filename.

Backup to Your Network Drive
Each student, staff and faculty member at the University of Michigan-Dearborn is allotted space on a network file server. Your space remains private and is accessible only by authentication - when you successfully login with your Novell Server password. Save yourself the headache - please backup your work regularly. For more information or help in learning how to backup your files, contact the ITS Help Desk at 313.593-HELP or send an email request to helpdesk(at)umd.umich.edu.

* We recommend against relying on floppy diskettes as your only storage medi