Mike is building a home entertainment system and asked for my input.  He asks, “Can you tell me the basic computer parts I would need to complete a home entertainment system?”  Mike, I’m assuming from our conversation earlier that you already have a television and audio receiver.  I’ll outline a few common components and maybe a few not-so-common.

I think every entertainment center should have a file server to house your audio and video files.  File servers allow access from any computer in the house including your video player.  An inexpensive server uses an old PC with a couple decent sized hard drives.  FreeNAS is free operating system software specifically for this kind of setup.

My own media center uses a small Mini ITX computer which acts as this primary video and audio player.  I have a fairly inexpensive Media Center remote control which has all the functions of a computer mouse and DVD remote control.  With it I can play all my media files through both my TV and receiver.

Most people don’t think of media center extenders when they think of building a media center.  Basically a media center extender does just that – it extends media files into other rooms in the house where you may not have (or want) a computer.  The device ties into your wireless network and acts similarly to a DVD player in that it plays files located on your server.

An odd device which is quickly gaining popularity is the Roku box.  With a Roku, movies from Netflix – among others – can be played on your TV without the need of a computer.  I personally use a Roku box on my TV in the bedroom.  It looks like a little set top box and comes with a remote control.  To watch a Netflix movie all I need to do is load it from a computer and it plays on my TV.

Cindy is curious if there are easy methods of backing up her data and asks:  “What technique do you recommend I use to backup my data?”  Cindy, no matter the system you use, the goal is to duplicate your data to a separate location so you can easily reproduce it in case of a catastrophic system failure.  One of the worst feelings is realizing years worth of pictures and data has been lost to a hard drive failure.

First things first, your backup archives are only as good as the media it’s copied onto.  In other words, if the external hard drive you choose is ancient and makes more noise than my old truck then you’re in bad shape.  I suggest purchasing a new dedicated drive to make your backups onto.  Small drives are alright because you should only be backing up user files (pictures and documents).  It should be noted that the drive should ONLY be plugged in long enough to do the backup or recovery and then immediately unplugged.

Personally, I believe in a manual system which allows incremental backups.  With that being said, the technique I use is to backup once weekly; where ‘week 5’ replaces ‘week 1’ in sequence.  This way you can be sure you have everything you need and if for some reason you find ‘week 2’ is missing data you can recover it from ‘week 1’s’ archive.  At the end of a four week cycle I end up with four archives each containing data from the prior week plus changes I’ve made.  If you’re as confused reading this as I am writing it than I suggest stopping in the store and I’ll explain it.

There are some software and hardware solutions which can make your job a lot easier.  Macrium Reflect Free and Acronis Home are two software solutions which allow backup of your whole system directly to the external drive.  As the name suggests, Macrium is free which may make your decision easier.  A slick hardware solution that is literally “plug and play” is from Clickfree.  Basically it connects between the computer and hard drive and backs up your data for you.  Depending on how lazy you want to be can change how you perform your backup.

Tech-Tip of the week:  Plan a day during the week when you can run malware scans on your computer.  A great time is right before you go out for the evening when the computer won’t be used for a few hours.

(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner.  You can e-mail him at Jeromy@LocalComputerWiz.com or call him directly at (978) 919-8059.)