Safeguarding your important files

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

As the end of 2001 drew closer, I thought I would like to start 2002 with a lot of fresh things, including a new operating system on my home-assembled PC. So I decided to replace the Windows 98 on this Asus-based work computer with Windows XP.

There were at least three other reasons why I wanted to do this. First, the system on my work computer had already become too overloaded and unwieldy with applications as well as small utility programs that I had been downloading from the Internet.

The directory structure had become so complicated that it was beginning to get too difficult to track down the files that I needed. Reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system and applications would solve a lot of problems. Besides, now that I had returned to PT Microsoft Indonesia the Windows XP test-bed Dell PC that they had loaned to me for a couple of months, I thought I would need my own XP machine so I would have the opportunity to get to know the new OS better.

I took great care in saving all my work that was stored in the My Documents folder and all its subfolders. I created three copies of them, which showed how careful I was. I made one backup copy in a separate partition in the PC's 30 GB hard disk. I copied them to a dedicated folder on my HP Pavilion, which was already networked to my work PC. I even burned a CD with the help of the Pavilion to store all the backup files. Certainly it was more than enough to safeguard the fruit of my whole year's toil.

Missed the e-mail: Over the year, I had also received thousands of e-mail messages. I kept the important ones. I did not use OE's Address Book, because many Internet worms use the addresses in it to send out messages without our knowledge. So, each time I needed to send a message out, I would first have to find the recipient's earlier message in the Inbox or other archive folders, and then hit the Reply button to create my outgoing message. Not surprisingly, the archives were very important to me.

So, using Windows Explorer, I went to the Store Folder of my Outlook Express (OE). I copied all the files in it into these different backup locations. Then, with a Bismillah, I reformatted the C: partition of the hard drive and installed Windows XP.

Everything went fine -- that is until I tried to import all my e-mail archives into the new Outlook Express. No file was found in any of the backup locations, I was told. Obviously, I was not copying the actual e-mail files. It was undoubtedly the biggest disaster I had in 2001. Ironically, one of my readers once asked me how he should backup his e-mail messages, and I still remember I told him to do exactly what I did. I hope he did not end up losing all his e-mail archives and curse me for it.

Honestly speaking, it was quite painful to accept the reality that I had just lost all my e-mail messages up to December 20, 2001, which also included some important projects that I had promised to finish and deliver by the time my clients returned to their office in 2002. I had also lost all the data that I had accumulated throughout the years and kept as e-mail messages I sent to myself.

OE's Help does not go into enough details on how we should go about backing up our e-mail messages. After some digging, I finally came across Microsoft's Web site in its Knowledge Base, which provides a far better, and interesting, way of doing it. Here is what we should do.

Store Folder: As I once wrote in this column, OE saves all the e-mail messages in each of the e-mail folders in a separate .dbx file. These files, along with others with extensions .mbx and .idx, are stored in what is called the "Store Folder". To find this particular folder, the only way is to start OE, click on the Tools menu, and then on Options. You will have a dialog box, and you need to click on the Maintenance tab.

Click on Store Folder, and you will see the folder name complete with its path. Select the entire entry by pressing End once. Then hold Shift down and press Home. When the entire path is selected, you can copy it by pressing Ctrl-C, or clicking on it with the right mouse button and clicking on Copy from the drop-down menu.

Now here is an interesting step that I learned from the Web site. To start a Windows Explorer and tell it to immediately go to a specific folder, we can use the Run command that you see at the bottom of Windows' Start menu. Click on Start, then on Run. Click Ctrl-V to paste the copied path (or click inside the address box with the mouse right button and then click on Paste from the menu list). When the path appears in the box, click OK. This will show all the contents of the Store Folder in Explorer.

Your task is now to copy all the contents in the folder. Click on Edit in Explorer's menu bar, and then click on Select All (or use the Ctrl-A shortcut). Once all the files in the Store Folder are selected, you can copy them to a backup folder, to a shared folder (to be copied again later to a connected computer), to a removable disk drive such as Zip. At worst, you can copy them to multiple diskettes (Windows will ask you to insert a new diskette once one is full).

You will need to backup the addresses and mail accounts as well. If you use identities, make sure you log in using each of the identities at a time. Then click on File, Export, and then select Text Files (Comma Separated Values), and save the file in the backup location. To backup your e-mail account so that you will not have to manually enter all the complicated information needed to access your ISP's mail servers, click on Tools in OE's menu, and then on Accounts. You will see the Export button on the right. Click on it and follow the straightforward procedure to save the Internet Account File (IAF) in the backup location.

Once all the files are safely backed up, you can proceed with the installation of the new OE. Once it is properly set up, all you have to do is import the files from the backup folder. Be very careful, though, because I know exactly how it feels to lose all the important e-mail messages and their attachments.

By the way, if you want to read Microsoft's tip yourself, just go to www.microsoft.com, click on Support and then Knowledge Base. Under Search, select Outlook Express, and type in Q270670 in the box below it. Then click the Go arrow.