My Documents
This is the most important folder that you absolutely must backup. If you have ever created anything on your computer, such as a Word document or even a Paint document and you would like to keep around, then I strongly suggest you backup this directory. If your documents directory is named differently than the standard My Documents folder that Microsoft insists or if you have multiple document directories, then obviously you're going to be backing up all those directories. If you're one of those people who like to save all over the place, I strongly suggest you create a My Documents sub-folder in your Backup directory that you created earlier and get those documents organized!

Email
I use Microsoft Outlook 2000 and have used Microsoft Outlook Express 5 before, so below are the procedures to how to backup your email files. Sorry Netscape users, I gave up on Netscape a while ago.

Outlook Express 5
Start a Find (or "Search" for you Windows 2000 users) session and find every file that ends with a DBX extension. To do this, simply type in *.dbx into the field and simply copy all those files into a temporary backup directory (e.g. a Mail sub-directory in your Backup directory). Be sure to keep a note (suggestion: in a text file) of the location of these files so you know where to restore them to.

Microsoft Outlook 2000
Outlooks users have it very easy. Just go to File -> Import and Export, select Export to a File, click Next and select Personal Folder File. Click next, select which folder you would like to backup (all folders under the selected folder will be backed up if you select the Include subfolders checkbox), put in where you want to save the backup file (probably in that Backup folder we created earlier) and click Finish to see all your email messages backed up.

Address Book
This is also a very important piece of data that most of you will want to backup. Like the email backup process before, I can only explain the process for both Outlook Express 5 and Outlook 2000.

Outlook Express 5
Again, you will be finding all files that end with the WAB extension. Start a Find session and type in *.wab, then select all the files that you find and copy them to your Backup folder, also keeping a note of the original location of the file.

Microsoft Outlook 2000
Following the process explained above to backup your messages, the simplest way to backup your address book and email into one file would be to perform the same steps as mentioned above, but this time select the top-level folder (usually called Outlook Today) and make sure that Include Subfolders is checked. This will backup all of your personal files, which includes your email and address book (or called Contacts under Outlook).

Other Programs
These are basically the only programs that I find myself backing up every time I perform this format task.

ICQ
To save from having to add everyone back onto your list and having to have them authorize you again, simply just copy everything in your ICQ store directory to your backup folder. For ICQ 2000a, this store directory is called 2000a and for ICQ, 99a, it would be called 99a. This directory is right under the root ICQ directory, usually found at C:\Program Files\ICQ. Again, keep note of the original location of these files (in my case, would be C:\Program Files\ICQ\2000a).

CuteFTP
In the root folder of CuteFTP, there are two files that keep all the sites that are created in the FTP Site Manager feature of CuteFTP. They are called smbdata.dat and smbdata.bak, simply backup both of these files, again keeping note of the original location.

Other Files
If you download files from the Internet, and you don't want to spend the time to download them again, then I also suggest you include your downloaded files into this Backup directory. If you have a modem connection to the Internet, I strongly suggest you try to keep almost everything you download to save you bunches of time. If you have a cable/ADSL or faster connection, then it's really up to you to decide whether you want to spend the time to hunt down the files. I also keep a special directory for all my MP3's that I keep every single time I backup my files.

Anything else you feel that is worthwhile to backup, just throw 'em into the pile!

On to: Backing up Data - Performing the Backup