In Part 1 of this series, I covered installation of the operating system. Part 2 was about installing your software. Today we’re going to talk about loading your content libraries. Once again it is best to be prepared before you start the process of loading your content onto the new computer. Gather up the discs and/or the downloaded libraries and have them ready.

We should first define content libraries and your definition can certainly be different than mine. For me this includes content such as clip art, stock photos, fonts and other data that gets used in your projects but doesn’t get changed on a regular basis. To me it is different that data you create because it can always be re-installed from the original discs/downloads in case of a hard drive failure. Thus, I don’t feel the need to back up this type of data. Since I don’t back it up, I also put this data on my D drive. Should you want to include it in your backup, you’ll want to put it on the E drive.

I feel it is very important to add fonts to your system in the correct way so that Windows doesn’t get overwhelmed with them. You may want to read Last Word in Font Management for an explanation of the process. A much more in-depth explanation is provided in Lesson 4 of CorelDRAW X5 Unleashed Advanced Topics. Setting up your fonts correctly on a new system is a lot easier than trying to clean things up later if you blindly install all fonts into Windows. Getting your fonts right can lead to a faster and more stable computer in the long run so it is definitely worth your time.

Getting the rest of the content on your computer can be as simple as copying from a disc or unzipping from a downloaded file. Other content libraries come with an installer. As an example, both the CorelDRAW X4 and CorelDRAW X5 DVDs have an option to install the content libraries to a location of your choosing. Should you get new content later, take the time to put it in the location you choose. Keeping things organized can makes things much easier when you need to find something and/or when it is time to move to a new machine. Once you have all your fonts in a folder on one machine, it is a lot easier to simply move that folder to a new machine.

Take the time and get your content libraries in order. In the next installment we’ll talk about where to store the data you create and how to keep it backed up.