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How to Back Up your Important Data

Guide done on: 21 Feb 2013

Illustrations using: Windows 7 and Outlook 2010


Introduction Data loss can be a common and annoying experience of computer users. The purpose of a backup is to recover your data after its loss, and to alleviate the impact on your work. This guide will show the step by step instructions on how to back up the following important data from your computer to another storage media, such as an external hard-disk. A. Emails B. Calendars & Contacts C. Personal Folders D. Documents (Files and Folders) E. Favorites F. H Drive


A. Emails Outlook Personal Folders are used to store emails from your Exchange mailbox to your local computer. You could then back up the Personal Folders to another computer or a storage media, such as an external hard disk. Creating a Personal Folder 1. From the File menu bar, choose Info > Account Settings > Account Settings…

2. Click on Data Files > Add…


3. Select Outlook data file (.pst) and click OK.

4. Next, choose the file name and folder location which you wish to save your Personal Folder. Click OK.

Note: Remember the folder location where you saved your Personal Folder. It is from this same location which you will back up your Personal Folder to a storage media, such as external hard disks.


The new Personal Folder will be added into the Data Files.

5. Your Personal Folder is now created and it will appear in your folder list.


Moving your emails to Personal Folders Simply do a left-click to drag your emails to the folder inside your Personal Folder. You can create new sub-folders within Personal Folder to manage your stored emails properly.

Note: Dragging the emails to the Personal Folder will remove them from the Exchange server. You will no longer view them from Outlook Web Access or mobile phones or from another computer. If you wish to retain your emails in Exchange server, do a copy of the emails to the Personal Folder instead – do a right-click to drag the emails to the folder and you can choose the option “Copy”.


Also remember to restore any archived emails from the Enterprise Vault first, before moving them to the Personal Folder.

If you only back up the archived shortcuts , these cannot be opened from a Personal Folder.

To restore the emails, highlight a batch of archived emails and click on Enterprise Vault > Restore

Once the email icons are restored back to the original envelope , you could now start to drag your emails to the Personal Folder.


B. Calendars & Contacts You could also make use of the Personal Folder to back up your Calendars and Contacts. Moving your Calendars to Personal Folders 1. Right-click on Calendar from your Folder List and select Copy Calendar. 2. Select the Personal Folder and click OK.

3. The Calendar is now stored on your Personal Folder.

Moving your Contacts to Personal Folders 1. Right-click on Contacts from your Folder List and select Copy Folder. 2. Select the Personal Folder and click OK.


3. The Contacts is now stored on your Personal Folder.

C. Personal Folders After moving your emails, calendars and contacts to the Personal Folder, it’s time to back up the Personal Folder itself. 1. Firstly, you need to know the folder location of the Personal Folder file (the file extension is *.pst). 2. To know the folder location, from the File menu bar, choose Info > Account Settings > Account Settings… 3. Under Data Files, highlight your Personal Folder and click on Open File Location.

4. Copy the Personal Folder file to another storage media, such as an external hard-disk.

Note: Please close your Microsoft Outlook first, before copying the Personal Folder. This is to prevent corruption to the file.


D. Documents (Files and Folders) The common folders which contain your important documents would include: Documents, Desktop and D drive. 1. Navigate to your Documents by going to Start > Documents This will open a window which shows all your files and folders stored under Documents. Simply copy them to your storage media, such as external hard-disk or thumb-drive.

2. For Desktop, copy the files and folders which you need on your Windows Desktop. 3. For D drive, go to Start > Computer > double-click on D: Copy the files and folders which you need to your storage media.


E. Favorites Favorites are the list of links to your frequently visited websites in Internet Explorer. To back up your Favorites, go to Start > Computer > C drive > Users > double-click the folder which is named after your NUSNET UserID > look for the Favorites folder and copy it to your storage media.

F. H Drive If your computer is on the NUS domain, you will have a Home Directory (H Drive) in your Computer. This is the network drive provided by Computer Centre for you to access files between different computers. To back up the files from the H Drive, go to Start > Computer > look for the H drive and double-click on it. Copy the files and folders which you need to your storage media.