Posts Tagged ‘backup’
A guide of Outlook Express backup
Most small companies and home users don’t need to buy an expensive solution for data backup. They can simply copy important files to a CD or DVD, and if an information loss occurs, they can get it back easily.
If it is simply to copy documents, photos and other files, not the same is for emails, attachments, address book, stationery and other related information from your Outlook Express email client.
This article will explain how everybody can create a manual Outlook Express backup copy (because Outlook Express don’t offer a built in backup function) This email program is usually installed with the Windows operating system and is probably among the most commonly used email programs today.
1. Backup email messages
In Outlook Express, emails are stored in files with DBX extension. The easiest way to find these files is to open Outlook Express and from menu select Tools | Options | Maintenance and click the Store Folder button. Here you can find the path to the folder containing your emails.
This procedure works for all kind of email: SMTP / POP3, IMAP, MAPI, or even the Hotmail Account (some messages might be stored only at the Hotmail server).
To save all your emails and attachments you should copy all the DBX files from the folder.
2. Account settings:
Details about your mail and news accounts are stored in the registry. To find them, start RegEdit and select the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager” key from the left panel. To save this data, from menu select: Registry | Export Registry File. Save the file to a name like “accounts.reg”.
3. Mail Rules
The Outlook Express mail rules are stored in the registry, in the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities” key. To save this data, from menu select: Registry | Export Registry File. Save the file to a name like “rules.reg”.
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Data Backup – Do you have a backup and data recovery plan in place
Data backup is rarely a part of a home computer user’s or business IT administrator’s plans, we all say it will never happen to me or my company, but in reality we are just mentally preparing for the time we lose our data. Its like trying to stop smoking, we all know we should do it but will find every excuse not to. So be honest with yourself and ask yourself the question, do you have a backup plan for your data, or more importantly, do you have a restore plan which will protect your business should something go wrong? All business leaders and owners will now tell you that computers are way past being a useful part of our lives, but now they are an absolute necessity. We acknowledge the data which resides on our computer infrastructure is the most important asset of any organization. I ask again, what would happen if you lost your data and what are you doing to protect it?
The reasons for data loss are endless, human intervention, hardware failure, software failure, natural disaster, loss, theft, we can go on, but we can be sure of one thing, as time goes by the list will get longer and longer.
Ever had anything stolen or lost anything before?
I have been in the IT industry for some 25 years now, and as you can imagine, I have heard some bizarre stories of how computers and servers have been stolen. Laptops stolen from back seats of cars (data lost), a colleague forgot he left his laptop on the roof of his car; problem is he realized when he was 160 miles down the road (lost data). My friend’s office was broken in twice in two nights, first time resulted in loss of desktop computers and totally trashed alarm system (some data loss), and second night was to take the servers along with the backup device and media! Apparently the heavy stuff was stolen the second night as the thief’s had more time due to the alarm not being repaired quickly enough (total data loss and company ceased trading within 8 months). Save yourself money; prevent data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup plan.
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Consequences of data loss and Why should Offsite Backup be used
There is a calculated trend in all business corporations and firms: when the enterprise is getting bigger, its support of data increases its complexity, volume and value. The larger your enterprise is, the more significant your data files become. The traditional tape backup can no longer produce in-depth data information about all the important features of your business. That’s why many people get acknowledged to a more adequate file protection. A secure offsite backup system can be the possible solution. Business owners and offices managers have got it straight: if the business is to flourish, precise data information storage should be used.
Offsite backup systems offer something, which no other data store can do: they protect to the greatest extent all your files. But why should they do that, you may ask. Imagine you are a business owner. You have your own office computer, which is crammed up with all the valuable info. Well, what if the computer gets stolen, or a short-cut puts it out of practice? What will happen to your enterprise? If you are still not convinced enough to the rational extent, let’s consider the following statistic data. 1 in every 4 computer users suffers a critical data loss every year. Last years over 500,000 were stolen. Disk and other hardware failures are so numerous that major disk and computer manufacturers/resellers are reducing their warranties to 12 months. Over 25% of data loss is a result of computer program errors, software viruses and natural disasters (factors completely out of your control). 50% of businesses that lose their data never open their doors again. Of those businesses that do manage to stay open, 90% end up failing within two years. Data loss will cost business an estimated £12 Billion this year.
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Companies must be prepared for data storage and backup compliance
Companies must account and deal for new legislation governing how information is stored on IT systems.
The EU is shortly to adopt many of the recommendations on corporate governance set out by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK firms are to be expected to deal with and manage explicit guidelines on how to store email and other documents on their IT systems. IT managers should consider the necessary procedures and technologies needed for compliance now, in order ensure technology is able to deal with the new legislation.
Regulations regarding data storage at the moment are fairly lax, but there will be a huge increase in the amount of data than must be held over the next 18 months to two years.
Email archiving, the increased use of expencive write-once read-many media, information lifecycle management and content-aware storage as a few of the technologies which firms should consider for the future, though in some cases companies will simply need to improve the way they manage existing systems.
It is anticipated that new legislations will demand that an organizations’ archiving solutions must guarantee that the information they hold has not been changed, and keep it for a specific period of time before automatically deleting it.
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