Place your files in a seperate partition (space on your hard disk)

One thing I find very useful is setting up your PC so that all your own files are in a seperate space (partition) on the hard disk drive.

This has three main advantages:

1) If your Operating System (such as windows!) dies on you, you can reinstall it without having to lose your saved files, such as your precious photos!

2) It makes backing up your saved files a lot easier, as you can just back up that one partition.

3) Makes putting your saved files back onto that or any other pc much easier should you ever need to.

(Step 1) So how do you do it?

Easy, when installing your OS such as Vista, you simply create two partitions, one for the OS, and one for your files. This way the 'storage' partition for your files will show up like a seperate hard disk.

I have 100GB for the OS, although if you don't install many programs 50 could be enough. And I have the rest of the drive 250GB for my files and photos.

Once you've installed your OS and have your seperate partition there's a few other things you'll want to do.

Step 2

Before you start simply go to your storage partition and create folders for the things you are going to move there, mainly, 'Mail' and 'Documents'.

Step 3

A) Windows Mail

First one is change the location for your mail, so that it is saved in your storage partition.

Open Windows Mail, go to tools > options > maintenance > store folder

And in there choose the 'Mail' folder you created earlier on your storage partition, as the location.

Now all of your emails in Windows Mail will be saved there

B) Change Documents Folders

Next you'll want to move the location of your documents folders, from the OS partition to the storage parition.

Simply go to the start bar and rick click 'documents' > location > move

Then set it to point to your 'Documents' folder that you created on your storage partition earlier. It gives you the option to copy all it's contents too - so if this is a new install you can just copy them over.

Now your default 'documents' folder is on your new partition - and all programs will refer to it whenever they're meant to refer to your documents folder.

C) Any more to move?

Simply do the same for 'Pictures' and 'Music'. And you're sorted

Any downsides?

The only downside is that if you have more than one user account on your PC, they will all be able to access the files on the storage partition. However if you are the only person to use your PC this is not an issue.

Conclusion

So to conclude, by doing this you make it much easier to keep your files safe, not only do they become seperate to your operating system (so if it dies, it can be reinstalled without it touching your files!). And it also makes it easier to back up all your files, including emails - by just copying the contents of your storage partition to either a USB hard disk, or dvds.

I reinstalled Vista the other day and it took me next to no time! All I had to do was reinstall my programs, but the main stuff, my files, photos and emails weren't even touched

You just have to follow the instructions from step 3 once you have reinstalled your OS.

I would not risk backing up important files on the same HDD, Azz, no matter how many partitions were created on it, you would still lose files/folders if the HDD developed bad sectors/got corrupted. I think it's a much better idea to back up on a seperate HDD with no OS.

I didn't suggest backing up on the same HD - hope it didn't come across that way

I wrote:

Oops, I should have read your post completely Azz

lol nevermind, hopefully it emphasizes to people that backing up in the same HD is not a good idea

Backing up my boarding kennel files is a must, so I have them on the computer- 0n the second hard drive for that computer- on another computer as well as on a memory stick-so backed up in 3 different places.
As for the photo files they are on the second hard drive of my computer and on disc, the reason being, the discs for long term storage and hard drive for instant access.

Bazza