Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
November 12, 2006

Volume 2, Number 22 — Sunday, November 12, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

3.  Backing Up to External Drives

Subscriber and friend Sam Boggs wrote me to say:

Terry:
I recently purchased a Seagate 160 GB external hard drive to back up key files. It did not come with any software; it just acts like an oversized thumb drive, and it works fine in that mode. I have manually copied "My Documents" to that new drive.

My question is this:
Is there any software, preferably freeware, that will allow me to do a quick incremental backup (for example will write only new and overwrite only more recent file versions) without asking me about each individual file. For example, if I have an old text called "abc.doc" and it hasn't changed since the last backup, I'd like the software to not put a second copy of abc.doc on the external HD, or ask me if I want to overwrite.

I've seen "One button backup" advertised on some external HD's but this doesn't have it built in.

Thanks again for your very helpful and informative newsletter.
Sam Boggs

Must be time for articles on backing up your system and backing up your data.

Fortunately, I've written about backing up a number of times -- and the first article in this issue is also about backing up.

Here are the classics:

• Backing Up My System
• Backing Up My Data

Plus, there are articles in my newsletters about a month ago, or so, about my recent hard-drive failure experiences.

These experiences have convinced me to get started doing image backups again. I bought Acronis True Image and have been pleased with it.

My recommended software:

• For backing up your system, Acronis True Image (commercial), image backups and file backups, full or incremental
• For backing up your data, Replicator (free), file backups

One more option -- a free one that may work for you (I have experimented a little with it, but was unsuccessful getting it to run on one of my computers -- the Recovery Is Possible Linux (RIP Linux). The interface is not nearly as obvious nor as sophisticated, but the tools include "Parted" ("Part-Ed" -- a partition editor) and "Partimage" ( "Part-image", apartition backup and restore utility).

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4.  Firefox 2.0 Bookmarks

Subscriber Karen Morton just started using Firefox 2.0 and wrote to ask:

Terry,

I'm playing with Firefox 2.0. I want to back up my bookmarks, but I can't seem to find them. Where does Firefox hide its bookmarks file?

Thanks,
Karen

I've written several articles on backing up Firefox bookmarks. They're available on my Terry's Computer Tips web site -- you can use the pulldown menus or the Site Map to find them easily. Although the sitemap is long, you can use Firefox's search function by pressing Control-F or using the menu option Edit, Find in This Page.

The first article gives your direct answer as well as the "easy way," which is:

The file is located in the Documents and Settings directory, here: C:\Documents and Settings\[userID]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[userprofile]\bookmarks.html ., where"userID" is your userID on the computer and "userprofile" is the profile Firefox is currently using as the default for that user.

If you have multiple profiles in your installation, you can see which is the default by opening the C:\Documents and Settings\[userID]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini file in Notepad.

Here are the links to the articles

• Backing Up Firefox Bookmarks,
• Backing Up Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, and Netscape Profiles, and
• An Easier Way to Back Up Firefox Bookmarks

All these articles are available via Terry's Computer Tips in the menu Computer TIps / Web Browsers / Firefox.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 22 — Sunday, November 12, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.