First Aid for Your Hard Drive

So you've ignored our advice about backing up your data, and now you're in trouble. Steve's got tips that can help.

You're doing OK, right? Your computing life has settled down; your machine is stable; and you haven't even considered upgrading to Microsoft's Windows Vista.

Then--oops! You spill coffee on your notebook. (Oh, you don't think that's possible? Read Amber Bouman's "Laptops and Liquids Don't Mix.") Or maybe there's a storm and a power surge fries your PC's hard drive.

One of our Windows experts, Scott Dunn, has marvelous advice on moving the folders that hold your data files off your Windows XP or Vista drive to simplify backups. You can read it in "Keep Your Data Safe by Reorganizing Windows' Folders."

I also have advice from PC World experts about what to do if your hard drive crashes--and you don't have a backup.

A medicine cabinet for your PC

Lincoln Spector, our jack-of-all-trades computing expert, tells you what to do when your Windows XP or Vista system refuses to boot. Get the details in "Diagnose and Repair an Unbootable XP or Vista PC."

It could be possible to bring a stalled hard drive back to life--at least until you can grab the data from it. Watch our "How to Resurrect a Crashed Hard Drive" video for tips, including the freezer and Frisbee techniques. (Hey, it's worth a try, right?)

If you want to fill your toolbox with just-in-case utilities, browse our "Recovering From Disaster" download collection.

But honestly, do you really want to go through all that?

Dig this: If you think "24" took a turn for the boring last season, just be thankful that Jack Bauer isn't fighting terror in the age of dial-up connections, pagers, and dot-matrix printers. BTW, you'll want to turn down your system's volume when you watch this video. [Thanks, Jim G.]

Dig this, too: Have you ever wondered what a combat aircraft's cockpit looks like? Click on a plane to see the cockpit. [Thanks, Bob.]

Better back it up

Readers keep asking me why should they should bother backing up their entire hard drive.

Data's definitely important, but so are your favorites, the look of your desktop, the customized feel of your beloved programs, and Windows patches. Reinstalling and reconfiguring everything from scratch is a nightmare. The best, most staunchly conservative method is to back up the entire drive, with daily incremental backups of just the files that have changed. Mine's set to back up at 7 o'clock every night.

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From : MSN Tech