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In today's world, backing up your data is critical, and there are literally thousands of ways, tools and utilities to do it. The following article addresses several common methods for backing up important data such as your website.
CDRW - Burning your files to CD is probably the best and most common way of backing up files, whether they're web files or not. CD burners cost under $100 and CDs cost about ten cents, so it's no wonder CDs have become popular for data backup and archived data storage.
Zip - By zipping a file, you can typically compress files for maximum storage. Zipping is the most common format used for compression. Zipping files has become increasingly popular since Windows implemented a zip feature into Windows XP. Simply right click on the files or directory you want to zip, and choose the 'send to' option and select 'compressed/zipped folder'.
Another handy utility for this is WinZip, which has introduced a heftier zip compression with its latest release. Of course after zipping your files, its always wise to archive those zip files by burning them to CD.
 WinRAR - WinRAR is another common backup and storage utility that permits more compression than zip files. WinRAR compresses media files more efficiently and has a built in file splitter that will split your compression into several files if needed (i.e. - 1GB of data won't fit onto 1 CDR, so you split into two 500MB files. Another good aspect of WinRAR is that it has the capability of zipping files and using other zipped files. This allows for a wide range of functionality in a single program.
So how should you go about backing up your website?
The first step is attaining FTP access to your site. You can get FTP access by speaking with your host. If you are a MonsterCommerce client, your files are automatically backed up each day.
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