It seems that the most important things for the average users to backup are their emails. And surprisingly most people only know how to backup their important documents in a particular folder and do not know how to backup their emails and favorites. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of my called me after his computer crashed. He thought that he had backed up all the important documents before hand but only to find out that all his emails were gone.
If you use Windows (95, 98, 2000 or XP), you are most likely using Microsoft Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook as your email client. So I will show you how to do backups for these two email clients.
Microsoft Outlook Express: Before you do the backup, you need to make sure that you turn on "view hidden files" in your file explore options. (Tools->Folder Options, and choose Show hidden files and folders) See below (shown for XP, for other systems the actual image is slightly different):
Then you want to copy the files under C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{DD79729C-EF95-4AE1-B72C-E8DF85324930}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\ (e.g. Inbox.dbx…) to your backup media. The underlined portion in the path might vary from person to person depending on how you created your account.
Microsoft Outlook: Before you do the backup, turn on "view hidden files" as shown above. Then copy the files under C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\ (e.g. outlook.pst…) to your backup media. Again, the underlined portion in the path might vary from person to person depending on how you created your account. The size of the backup is typically quite manageable, and can be stored easily on CDROMs or DVDs.
