Electronic Media Copying and Backups: Enhance Your Life and Your Business

First you need the right equipment. What kinds of copies do you want to make, and what media are you going to be copying from? If your answer is VHS tapes, you'll need the proper hookups in the back of your computer to accommodate a cable from the VCR. If you need backups primarily and you want to back up to DVD and to the Internet, you'll need a high-speed hookup and a DVD burner. Make your list, and then take it to your computer store. You'll almost certainly need to get a new computer; innovations today are leading to more and more robust computing technology, and you should have the best for your copying needs.

If you want to copy DVDs, you need to be aware of copyright restrictions. You absolutely must not copy DVDs for anything but your own personal use. To do otherwise is breaking the law. And the record companies have shown us that large media companies can come after individuals who performed activities when said activies were in the shady part of law—and they can win. Until digital media rights are clarified for everyone, err on the side of caution and make only a single copy; archive the original in your personal collection.

If you only want part of a DVD, you can copy clips or single images to either a DVD or a CD. You'll need blank media for burning, and you'll need DVD editing software. Some of the newer DVD burners will also burn an image into the back of your DVD to label it.

If you want to copy software contained on DVD or CD, you should be aware that, just like with movies, it's not a hundred percent legal; make sure you keep those copies for your personal use, just like you did with your movies. And it may be impossible to copy some software; for instance, newer Microsoft software is copyblocked to disallow copying. Fortunately, most game software companies and many others have realized the value of allowing you to back up, thus have chosen to trust you to do it responsibly rather than blocking you from doing it at all.

Copying video games is more complex. In order to copy them properly, you'll need a physical plug-in for either your computer or for the game itself so that the game console will boot the game properly. And while copying video games is understandable, in light of how often the disks get badly scratched, it also may be illegal. And software designers often save their best copy block technology for games. Be ready for a difficult struggle if you copy video games; but if you persevere, you'll be able to get it done.

With a good scanner and image editor, you can copy all your personal and family pictures onto CD, and then copy them if you like to send as Christmas greetings, gifts, or family newsletters. Digitizing pictures is actually a very straightforward thing to do; of the different electronic copying techniques, it's probably the easiest. To digitize pictures, you can take them with a digital camera to begin with; you can ask for them as digital pictures at the photo counter (for that matter, you can take your pictures to the photo technicians and ask them to digitize them for you – they will for a fee); or you can buy a scanner and scan them in yourself.

Small businesses have a special problem: the Blue Screen of Death. When it pops up, generally in the middle of something important you really need to finish, you have a serious problem; you may experience loss of hard drive data. That's when you reboot your computer and – nothing happens. Or an error message happens. Suddenly, you can't access your hard drive.

Instead of hoping this never happens, you should back up your hard drive regularly. The worst thing that could happen is that you'll never need to restore a backup. The best thing: that when your hard drive crashes, you'll have the backup to restore. It's like a digital insurance policy.

If you own a small business and depend heavily on your computer – for instance, if you run a merchandise business and need accurate copies of orders and of inventory – you might want to consider data backups. You can back your data up on tapes, DVDs, CDs, or online; the best method by far is online, though. Subscription costs for online backups can be high, but if you've ever lost your data, you'll agree it's worth its price. Your company without data is like a boat without sails or anchor – adrift.

If you prefer not to use Internet backups, tape backups are reasonably cheap, easy to use, and very stable. They've been used for years, and it's quite straightforward to recover data from a tape backup to your computer.

If you're backing up your data, you do need to be aware of the proper methods; or if your computer autoexecutes the backup, you need to remember to leave the computer on.. And if you're backing up, you should do it every night without fail; it won't cost you any more, and it may save you a full day's work

More information available at www.copysure.com