. . . continued from Hot News Just like regularly changing the oil and filters in your car, regular computer maintenance may one day be the difference between a computer and backup you can rely on, and a bunch of cranky, unstable hardware which contains jumbled bits and bytes that look like a data but which are actually little more than garbage. Discovering that the data on your hard drive is suddenly and unexpectedly inaccessible has frequently been likened to having a mild heart attack. Very bad. We note, peculiarly, that you need the same number of tools to do oil and filter changes on your car as you do to maintain your computer. Car = filter wrench, slot screwdriver, Phillips screwdriver, pliers, wheel ramps, wheel chocks, drain pan, and a calendar. Computer = defragmentation software, backup software, CD and DVD media, drive clean up software, drive recovery software, undelete software, CD and DVD recording software, and a calendar. Do your oil and filter changes religiously at every recommended interval. Perform analysis, maintenance and backups of your hard drives at least once a week. If you ignore the maintenance on your car and the engine starts to whine, you've probably left things too late and serious damage is occurring. If you ignore the analysis, maintenance and data backup routines for your hard drives and one of them starts to whine, data loss will follow.

If I never see another interminable backup session, it won't be too soon. This is said just before starting a weekly backup of all the new data on my main workstation.

If I never see another interminable backup session, it won't be too soon. This is said just before starting a weekly backup of all the new data on my main workstation. It's a redundant backup with no compression—just a straight file copy session which ends up with everything stored on DVD. The server has already been backed up (that happens nightly), but because those backups are all encrypted and compressed and stored on tape, something that is more readily accessible is also necessary for those times when a lost file has to be retrieved in something under several hours. Tape backup systems work quite well, but restoring data from tape can take a very long time.

Diligent backup strategies aren't the only effort needed to preserve precious data. Whether you have the benefit of a central server setup or you're storing crucial data on your workstation or desktop or laptop computer, one of the fundamental building blocks for safe and stable data storage is a comprehensive, consistent maintenance program for your hard drives.

It's all about your data. Hard drives fail, keyboards break, mice stop working for no apparent reason, video cards die, CPUs burn out or overheat, power supplies short circuit, and motherboards fry their chips. Any one of those items can partially, completely, temporarily or permanently kill all or some of your files. Very bad.

Your files. Do you understand? Your work. Everything you write, create and communicate using your computer is at imminent risk of total loss if it's not backed up. You can actually increase the very real threat if you're also not doing any system analysis and hard drive maintenance.

The weekly five step plan is simple:

1. Run SystemSuite to clean up your hard drives, defragment the Windows registry file, clean up the registry, delete useless files, clear out caches and so on.
2. Run Diskeeper to defragment and optimize your hard drives.
3. Run Retrospect Backup to fully back up all your data to CD or DVD.
4. Manually back up to CD or DVD all of the files you've created since the previous backup.
5. Run a drive and system diagnostic program to verify the integrity of all the subsystems in your computer.

There are some issues to deal with. Of the five tasks listed above, only Diskeeper and Retrospect can be set to run automatically according to a preset and customizable schedule. Everything else must be started manually, whenever you happen to remember.

Whatever Executive Software has done with the scheduling tools in Diskeeper seems to work properly and reliably. Ditto for Retrospect Backup. This is a good thing primarily because a conveniently scheduled 3:00 AM defrag, drive optimization and backup doesn't interrupt my work. If you're constantly handling lots of image or video files, defragment your drives more often. According to Executive Software, using Diskeeper on a daily basis is a wise policy. Diskeeper's direct competitor, Raxco's PerfectDisk, says the same thing. I've been using Diskeeper for years because it continues to be cutting edge, reliable and above all else fully automated. Set it and forget it.

I want a broad spectrum of reliable system analysis and maintenance tools that don't require my direct intervention. I want to augment Diskeeper and Retrospect with a fully automated suite of programs that do the same thing as the mechanic who works on my car: take care of everything and only holler when there's a problem which needs my attention (and my money).

Please.

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