Do You Have A Good Image?

August 25, 2007 – 7:08 am

BackupPeople ask me for computer buying advice all the time. Things like “Where should I buy a computer?” or “How much RAM do I really need?.” Regardless of the initial question they ask, I always try to work in my number one computer-related recommendation – back up, back up and back up. You have to understand that it is not a question of if your hard drive will fail, it is a question of when it will fail.

If you type “computer backup strategies” into Google, you will get more information than you could possibly absorb including instructions for setting up a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) configuration, backup software/hardware and backup scheduling strategies. However, most home users are only interested in protecting their music collection, family photos, address books and personal files. Of course, if you have ever bought a new computer and attempted to move your data over from your old computer, you know that you restoring your data is a huge task. Picture how you would feel if you lost everything on you current computer due to a hard drive failure and didn’t have any data to restore.

The first question you have decide is what type of media are you going to use to store your backup. If you only want to backup a few personal files, you may be able to get away with using a CD or DVD. I don’t care for this strategy since they can get scratched or simply fail. I use a Seagate 500 gb external hard drive that I have partitioned into two separate drives. The reason I split it in two is I have a two-tiered backup strategy.

I use backup software to do a daily incremental backup of my data and I also do a disk image. I do a weekly disk image to make it easy rebuild my system if my hard drive fails. Since I’a a MacBook user, I chose the free Carbon Copy Cloner software to make my disk image. However, there are several programs available for Windows users that will image hard drives. The most popular are Norton Ghost ($70) and Acronis True Image ($80) but there are also some shareware options available.

The benefit of having a disk image is it provides you with a complete copy of your hard drive at the time the image was taken including all your programs, files and settings. So if you have to replace a hard drive, you simply copy the image to the new drive and you are back up and running. Never forget that the image is just a snap shot of your computer at the time it was taken so it doesn’t replace a backup strategy that includes daily incremental backups.

If you don’t have an regular backup program, go out today and buy an external hard drive (they usually come with free backup software) and an imaging software program. If you backup today, it will save you a lot of heart ache if your hard drive decided it is time to give up the ghost.

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