Easy Tips to keep your data Healthy, Safe & Secure

If the data stored on your PC is so very precious then why not keep it healthy, safe & secure. In this post I would give you some easy tips to protect your data. Though this post is primarily directed towards Windows XP users, other Operating System (OS) users who are beginners can make a note of it & find corresponding mappings for their OS's too.

1. Always plugin your PC to a stable power source rather than raw power. It is always recommended to use an UPS to protect you PC from improper shutdowns.
2. It is said that Windows XP performs best with 4 partitions on your Hard Drive. This is actually based on mathematical calculations which I have learnt earlier when I was trained in a Voice Based Technical Support process, in a Call Centre long time back. Currently due to space limitations I would not be in a position to share the same calculations.
3. Keep your PC with a dual boot option so that you are able to boot to the secondary OS when your primary OS Windows XP fails to load due to some corruption issues.
4. It would be prudent not to install Windows XP on first partition, say the C drive & rather install the secondary OS on the C drive.
5. Also ensure that your critical data, say your Documents, Projects, Music, etc are not located on the same partition where your Windows XP is loaded. This is because sometimes we need to hard boot a PC when Windows XP gets hung up & file corruptions generally happen in the same partition on which the OS is installed. Thats why you would notice a Hard drive scan happening on the OS partition after an improper partition, further resulting in corrupt, truncated & finally junk files.
6. Have a good Anti-virus, Anti-Spyware & Personal Firewall application running in your PC & also update its Virus/Rules definitions on a regular basis to ensure that your critical data is Virus-free.
7. Don't run your PC greater than 10 mins or so after a Power failure. On an average an UPS gives a backup of 15-20 mins or so depending on how much it is loaded. An LCD monitor would result in greater backup time after Power failure.
8. Use a free tool like Microsoft's SyncToy to sync your critical data with a Portable USB disk large enough to backup the same data. I would always suggest to use an external Hard drive or a large Thumb drive rather than burning the data onto an Optical disk, which would anyways not provide you an option to have perfect sync.
9. Last but not the least do Defragment your PC's Hard drive as well as External Hard drive once in a month & also run a Scandisk to keep the Hard drives healthy & safe.

Always remember... Prevention is better than cure.