Windows Backup Guide

My Documents Backup

The My Documents folder most likely contains many of your important files. Most Windows programs, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access save their data in My Documents folder. The My Documents folder may contain subfolders such as My Pictures, My Music and My Downloads that you may wish to backup separately. Those folders usually take up a lot of space, and they are therefore recommended to be taken care separately.

We recommend backing up only those files that cannot be easily re-created. Generally speaking, these would be files that you create and save to your hard drive. Files that you created usually have a name that you assigned to them. Do backup your personal files, such as files created or named by you, files that are difficult to re-create, your financial files, files used frequently, like your contacts, files special to you, like your digital pictures. Don't back up operating system files, program files or applications, those with the .exe, .dll, .ocx, .hlp or .chm extensions. Don't back up temporary files with the .tmp and .bak extensions.

Also note that you may have placed some or of the important files on your desktop, the common location for program shortcuts and start icons. Many users tend to do this. My Documents, a standard Windows folder for storing personal documents, is where we are advising you to put all the important documents, pictures, files, and any other information you don't wish to loose, so that your data can easily be backed up from one central location. The default location of My Documents folder will vary depending on what version of Windows you're running:

C:\Windows\Personal\ on Windows 95.
C:\My Documents\ on Windows 98, ME.
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\My Documents\ on Windows ME, 2000, XP.
C:\Users\User Name\Documents\ on Windows Vista, 7.

These are typical locations, and they may vary greatly across different computer configurations. Argentum™ Backup will automatically detect, locate and back up the entire My Documents folder on any computer, under any Microsoft Windows (95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7) configuration.

Your most important personal files usually have some of the following common file data extensions:

Microsoft Word (.doc, .rtf, .dot) documents.
Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlt) tables and spreadsheets.
Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pot) presentations.
Database (.mdb, .dbf, .csv, .db, .xml) files.
Internet (.html, .txt, .pdf) documents.
Digital photo (.tif, .jpg) pictures.

Windows Backup Guide

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