How and Why to Back Up Data

All of the computers in the Joyner Library have a program installed on them that resets the computer to a default state every time the computer is booted up. This allows us to provide a more secure computing environment for our patrons, as any sensitive personal information, spyware or viruses that previous users may have introduced to the computer will be erased. However, this means that any work you save on a Library computer will be erased on reboot as well. A loss of power to the computer or an operating system error could cost you hours of work.

For this reason, it is important that you save your work someplace other than on the Library computer’s hard drive. The easiest and best solution is to bring your own external media, such as a floppy disk, writable CD, or USB flash memory drive. Any data you save to these external storage devices will be retained, even should the computer lose power or be forced to reboot.

If you do not have any external media, you should save your work to the T: drive while you work on it. The T: drive is a network drive that you can access, just like the hard drive or the floppy disk drive, from the My Computer folder. However, the T: drive is not a permanent storage solution and is flushed periodically to free space on it. While working from the T: drive will prevent you from losing your work if the computer loses power or reboots, you will need a way to take your work with you. Again, the best method is to bring your own external media. Otherwise, you can send your files to your own e-mail address as an e-mail attachment, provided they are not too large.