• Internet Explorer – Click on “My Computer” then on “Local Disk (C:)”. Once that folder is open, find “Documents and Settings” and open that folder and then find the folder with your username (in my case I look for “wbass”) and open that up. In this folder you’ll find a star icon labeled “Favorites”. Copy that file to your flashdrive to back up your favorites.
• Firefox – With Firefox open, click on the “Bookmarks” menu at the top of your screen. Select “Show all Bookmarks” from the dropdown menu. This will open up another screen where you can manage your bookmarks. Click on the “Import and Backup” button at the top of that window and select “Backup”. Save this file to your flashdrive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file.
• Chrome – With Chrome open, click on the icon of the wrench in the top right hand corner of the screen and select “Bookmarks” and then “Bookmarks Manager”. This will open up a new tab with all your bookmarks listed. Click on “Organize” at the top of the screen and select “Export bookmarks”. Save the file to your flashdrive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file.

Restoring your favorites

• Internet Explorer – Click on “My Computer” then on “Local Disk (C:)”. Once that folder is open, find “Documents and Settings” and open that folder and then find the folder with your username (in my case I look for “wbass”) and open that up. In this folder you’ll find a star icon labeled “Favorites”. Open up the flash drive or server drive where you backed up your favorites and find the folder called “Favorites”. Replace the “Favorites” on your new computer with the one you backed up. It will give you a message asking if you want to replace the folder. Click “Yes” and after it’s copied, you’ll see your favorites on your new computer.
• Firefox – With Firefox open, click on the “Bookmarks” menu at the top of your screen. Select “Show all Bookmarks” from the dropdown menu. This will open up another screen where you can manage your bookmarks. Click on the “Import and Backup” button at the top of that window and select “Restore” and then “From file”. Navigate to the file that is saved on your flashdrive, server or external hard drive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file now in your browser.
• Chrome – With Chrome open, click on the icon of the wrench in the top right hand corner of the screen and select “Bookmarks” and then “Bookmarks Manager”. This will open up a new tab with all your bookmarks listed. Click on “Organize” at the top of the screen and select “Import bookmarks from HTML file”. Navigate to the file that is saved on your flashdrive, server or external hard drive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file now in your browser.

So I lost some documents, a database I was working on and a few spreadsheets.  So be it.  It’s my own stupid fault for not backing those things up.  I preach that to teachers but I know and readily admit that I have a very haphazard approach when it comes to computing.  This is not the first time that I’ve lost stuff and I know it won’t be the last.  As most of us know… it’s not “if” your computer will break, it’s “when”.

So now I’m preparing to regroup and recreate some of the items that I lost.  What I’ve begun to notice though is that it’s not all that hard.  When most of the things you do happen online in the “cloud” the idea of a computer breaking down is not all that daunting.  The one thing that I will recommend is to back up your browser.  I use Firefox almost exclusively (although I’m dabbling in Chrome) and there’s this nifty little backup tool called MozBackup that I’ve used for about 4 years now.  What’s great about it is that once I have one Firefox installation the way I want it I can just run it on all the computers that I frequently use and have my environment back.  I haven’t used Foxmarks yet but I understand that it works well and would take care of part of my issue with syncing bookmarks across computers.  If you are a Firefox user and you do as much work online as I do, I suggest backing up your data and your browser settings as well.  Hopefully you won’t have a computer crash soon.  For me, it’s back to re-establishing my workflow and getting up and running.