Overview

 

Personal computers have become so reliable that it's easy to get complacent about backing up your files. In reality, catastrophic data loss, either because your hard drive crashed or you accidentally deleted something you hadn't intended to, is never a question of if but when. And when it does happen, and it will, reconstructing the information is

With flash drives now selling for the price of three Big Macs and a bucket of KFC chicken, please back up your Morning Flight data files. Religiously. We may be able to help with a corrupted file. Nobody can help you if your file is en route to another galaxy.

 

How to back up

 

Let's start with how not to. Backing up to a drive on the same computer is like trying to protect your china cabinet from earthquakes by moving it into the next room. Backing up to an external drive is a good first line of defense, but doesn't go far enough. You're still in the same house, at risk from fires, floods, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, meteorites ...

A better solution is to keep one flash drive off-site, and another plugged into the computer. Keep it one-button easy, or else you're not going to back up often enough. Now and then, archive everything to DVD. When disaster strikes, even a month-old backup is better than no backup at all.

 

What to back up under XP

 

Theoretically, the only thing you need to back up are your Morning Flight data files. You can always reinstall the program from the CD or, in the case of the Free Edition, download a new setup file. But because the application itself has such a small footprint (less than 16MB), the quickest and safest way is to simply back up the entire "MorningFlight" folder.

 

 

 

What to back up under Windows 7 and Vista

 

If you've followed our recommendations and installed Morning Flight outside the "Program Files" folder, the procedure is the same as the one for XP. However, if Morning Flight resides inside the Program Files path (C:\Program Files\Printfire\MorningFlight), backing up the Morning Flight folder would be pointless. That's because the files that need backing up aren't there. The operating system has taken it upon itself to relocate them all to the Compatibility Files folder.

 

 

First, open the Morning Flight folder, then click "Compatibility Files" and select all the files in that folder. Those are the data files that need to be backed up at the end of each day. The files in the Morning Flight folder are static program files that don't really need backing up, but you may want to do so at least once. In an emergency, they can always be reinstalled from the program CD.

 

To copy all the compatibility files to the Windows Clipboard, hold down the Shift key and click on ACTFile.TPS. Then, without letting go of the Shift key, scroll down and click on the last file in the folder. All the files should now be highlighted. Release the Shift key and press Ctrl-C.

 

 

Backing up - Step by Step

 

 

On both backup drives (the one you keep at home, and the one with your computer), create a separate folder for each workday. Before you shut down, copy the entire "MorningFlight" folder (for XP) or all the files in the "Compatibility Files" folder (for Windows 7 and Vista, if Morning Flight is installed in the Program Files path) into the folder of the day. Overwrite what's there from the previous week. The older a backup gets, the less useful it is.

At the end of the week, swap drives. On Friday evening, take the office drive home. On Monday morning, bring the home drive back to the office. Worst case scenario? Your surviving backup could be five days old. Even if your house burned down over the weekend and both drives went up in flames along with it, chances are, your original files would still be intact on your desktop at the office.