Whenever you shutdown or log off of your Windows XP computer, you will have the opportunity to automatically place a backup copy of the contents of your My Documents folder onto your department’s file share. The following steps describe how the process works.

1. When you shutdown, restart, or log off of your computer, the window below will appear. The window acknowledges whose documents will be backed up and how long it has been since that user last backed up their My Documents folder. Note: If you are logging off of a computer that is not your primary computer, then you may want to choose not to back up the My Documents folder. This is because you would be creating a backup of a different My Documents folder other than your primary one. This would apply mostly to student users who do not always work from the same computer. The My Documents backup routine does apply to any users who are using a computer in a public lab on campus.
   
   
   
2. Click the “Yes” button to back up the contents of the My Documents folder on the computer you are working at. Clicking “No” simply stops the backup procedure from continuing and no backup up is done. If you click neither “Yes” nor “No”, the above window will close automatically after 15 seconds having NOT done a backup.
3. If you click the “Yes” button, you will see a textual screen appear showing the contents of your My Documents folder being quickly backed up. If the backup process finishes successfully, you will see the window below appear acknowledging this.
   
   
   If the backup does not finish successfully, you will see a similar window acknowledging an unsuccessful backup. If your attempt to backup your My Documents folder is unsuccessful, you should contact the ITS Technology Support Center at 2-0999.

Locating your My Documents Backup on your Department's File Share
If you would like to verify that your backup is working correctly, you can view the backed-up files by opening the folder named “Backups” within your department’s file share and then opening the folder that is named with your logon username. Users are only able to open the folder that is named with their personal logon username. Inside of the folder named with your logon username will be folder named similar to “MAC000123456789”, and inside of this folder is where your backed-up files are located.

Deleting a file from the My Documents folder on your computer will cause that same file to be deleted from your next backup of your My Documents folder as well.

Cleaning Up Your My Documents Backup Folder