Back-up - regularly !!!

You are running dire risks if you do not back up your data.  An operating system is not a difficult task to re-install.  Your applications are easy, if you can find the original discs - but - if you lose your data due to over-writing by accident, hard drive failure or lose of computer (as examples) - how do you go about restoring your data.  After all, it is the "crown jewels" of your work and usually represents all you have written and maybe your accounts as well.

Back-ups can be made to floppies, but this soon gets tedious when you need more than three or four.

Consider, removable drives (i.e. Zip or Jazz), CD-R or CD-WR (for up to 650Mb), DVD or DVDRW for 4.7Gb or a tape streamer for very large amounts.

Data loss cannot be over emphasized.  To the home user it can be disheartening, to an business user it can be devastating.

If you are not doing backup's ... get to work now !!!

Remember, keep your back-up safe. It is pointless backing up your data to have it stolen or damaged.

Drive Partitioning.

Why partition a hard drive ?  When this page was first written in 2001, hard drives were around 20 or 30Gb. Well, many of today's drives are 200Gb going on 400Gb.  This is a massive amount of space to have on a single hard drive.

You would have the operating system - which normally runs less than 5Gb - mixed up with applications and data all rolled into one. If you are into music, films or digital photography, your data will be enormous compared to your operating system, but, unless you partition your hard drive, all your data will be lost if Windows has to be re-installed.  If your operating system became faulty to the point of a re-install, reformatting the C drive would simply wipe out everything on the C drive - see "Back-up" above.  If you have no copies of your data and the C drive is not accessible, you lose your data.

So, it makes a lot of sense to partition your hard drive.  A good basic partition would be C, D and E where the C partition would carry your operating system and closely linked applications, the D partition would carry all your other applications, the E partition would be devoted to your data (so it would not be formatted with the operating system).

This is a good basic partition of a large hard drive.

Ghosting your operating system.

It is worth asking your computer engineer to "ghost" or "image" your operating system.  Here is where drive partitioning really is useful.  With a ghost or image application, a complete copy of a known good operating system can be copied to another partition, removable disc or DVD/DVD+/-WR, .  To ghost the whole contents of a single drive is not impossible, but a bit impracticable.  If an operating system is ghosted or imaged and the system crashes, a re-install should be possible very quickly and you would not need your original application discs. If Windows has been activated, it will stay activated during a ghosted re-install and re-installation should take around 5 minutes. Compare this with a full re-install of Windows and your applications. 

It's a great time (and money) saver.

Spyware

Since 2001, spyware has become more than just an irritant. Today, spyware includes keyloggers, backdoor Trojans, password stealers, and botnet worms, which can cause data theft, financial loss and network damage. Spyware installs itself onto a user's computer by stealth, subterfuge and/or program engineering and sends information from the hacked computer to a third party without the user's permission or knowledge. Clearly, spyware must now be taken very seriously, as seriously as you take anti virus precautions - you do, don't you ? There is an excellent explanation of spyware from the Open University at OU Spyware, this is well worth a read - it should frighten the life out of you. If it doesn't, you are obviously well protected or you do not mind a third party looking through your private data and your bank accounts. So, how do we go from here ? There are as many anti spyware programs as there are anti virus programs. Many are free and the paid one's are quite cheap. I have taken a look at AdAware SE - which is free - in some detail at AdAware. Microsoft also do a free anti spyware program, but, I have found it allows Microsoft programs to be installed without asking - the Microsoft Toolbar is a good example - you are just informed it has been installed.