Upon initial startup, the first screen you're going to see is the backup scheduling wizard. You can also choose what to backup (new or changed) here, before proceeding to the next screen.

The next screen opens up a Windows Explorer type interface, and it's a simple matter of checking off various check boxes to select whatever it is you want to backup.

Finally, you set the options such as compression, and to verify (highly recommended) if your backups are successful. It's not very customizable though, and I suggest closing this wizard and doing things the old fashion way.

You'll be presented with yet another splash screen where you're presented with most of the application's options. Because you'll be backing up for the first time, you'll want to start with a blank job.

Again, an Explorer window will appear. Like before, you just select what files or drives you want to backup. I chose to backup our site (always a handy thing to do in case we get hacked ), and because it's our first job, we selected all the files. Later on, as we create another job, we'll only select new and changed files. Backup MyPC supports recordable CD/DVD, Tape, Zip, Jazz, and external or networked drives, but I decided to back it up directly to my hard drive. It's a lot faster, and I'll back it up to CD later (I probably won't, because I'm lazy, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't. We're actually doing it this way to show you what you shouldn't do ).

If you go into the options, you can select other things you'd like to do. I always compress, and log the backups in case something goes wrong. You can also set it to overwrite previous backups, or to make a new one and catalogue them. It's actually better to do it this way, in case you actually need an older backup. Trust me, it happens. The logging is important, because 99% of all backup software will not backup something that is in use at the time of backup. If it doesn't backup, you'll know, and you can do it manually afterwards. Note that you can also password protect your backup, so you need not worry about people restoring your porn, confidential files to their PC.

Once you've gone through the options, click start, and the backup begins. Like I mentioned, you can schedule this as well, and it's the way I think most of you will do it, especially if you have gigabytes of data to backup. Keep in mind that if it's this much data, you'll have to be around to swap CDs if you backup to your recordable. Compression will vary, but it did a good job with our site as it knocked about 20% off the total file size. How fast it backs up will be dependent on your hardware. It's not as fast as Symantec Ghost, but considering it's a Windows application, it was fairly quick.

Backing up is easy, but what good is it if you can't restore it. So, as a service to our readers, I deleted the site off my hard drive. Yes, I'm sure a few of you would wish it stayed off, but the live site is still online.