by Tips4PC.com
We all know how important it is to backup your files from your computer, however why don’t we ever do it? Or if we do have a backup and recovery plan it is incomplete and we have missed the most important backup files. Therefore when disaster strikes, we are still stressed from losing our main files.
The 5 Most Important Backup Files
Who can really say what the most important backup files are for you? If you could make only five backup files, which five would you choose? This will depend on your personal needs but I will highly recommend that you start with these five essential backup files:
Registry.DAT—Home Of Your License Keys
You’ve probably bought a bunch of software for your computer—you may even have paid more for software than you paid for your computer.
But, if you’re like most people, you didn’t bother to keep track of your license keys or other information necessary to unlock your computer programs. That’s ok—Windows kept track of it for you in REGISTRY.DAT (also known as the Windows Registry file).
You can copy registry.dat to a new computer and then use a registry editor to merge your old product registration keys into your new computer, saving you the hassle of re-entering them or the expense of having to buy new keys.
Of course, you’ll also need the programs, which we’ll discuss next.
Make Backup Files Of Your Program Files
Programs are most easily stored in their installer state—the .exe file you used to install them. If you have advanced presence of mind, create a directory on your desktop named “Installers” and put all of your installers in there when you’re done with them. Then make backup files of that directory.
But if you don’t do that—or it’s already too late for you to start doing that—you can get a copy of most programs by making backup files of the “Program Files” directory on the C drive.
On your new or repaired computer, just copy those backup files into the new computer’s Program Files directory. Of course, most programs are useless without their documents.
The 3 Other Files You Must Backup are here
This excerpt is shared with permission from tips4pc.com.
