One of the two best pieces of advice I can give any Pocket PC user out there is to:
1. Backup their device and back it up often.
2. Read number one again
Backing up your Pocket PC gives you some peace of mind when you are making changes to your device that if everything goes wrong, you can bring it all back again.
So this weeks tip will be a walkthrough on how you can use Activesync to easily back up your device and automatically back it up every time you dock your Pocket PC.
Step 1: Open Activesync on your desktop computer and go to the tools menu and choose backup/Restore...
Step 2: If this is your first backup, go ahead and choose the radio button that says "Full Backup"
Step 3: Take note of the "Incremental Backup" and the "Automatically back up each time the device connects" options. You can come back to this screen to set up Activesync to do incremental backups every time you sync your Pocket PC.
P.S. Incremental backup means that ONLY things that have changed since your last backup will be backed up. It saves a great deal of time.
Step 4: Hit the "Back Up Now" button.
Step 5: Let the backup complete without undocking your Pocket PC. It may take a few minutes the first time, but for the sake of this tutorial I did a full backup and it only took about 2 minutes. So it's not too bad. If you go back and set it for "Incremental backups" - see step 3 above, then it will be even shorter.
-=RESTORING =-- Step 1: To restore after a hard reset or disaster, open Activesync on your desktop again and go to Tools> Backup/Restore (see step 1 in the backup portion).
Choose the Restore Tab:
Step 2: Push the "Restore Now" button and away you go.
Conclusion:
Backing up your device isn't only recommended, it makes logical sense. If you are someone who wants to tweak your device, or try a lot of new programs, then there will be a time when something from out of nowhere causes your device to lose data, or hard reset. Backing up, gives you peace of mind so you can experiment, play and become more knowledgeable about your device.