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Backup a Hard Disk the Easy Way!

Emails, documents, photos, and other data files are more commonly stored on hard disks compared to five years ago. With the ever increasing capacities of disk drives, more and more people choose to save their data on the fast and large internal drives, as opposed to traditional external storage media. With this convenience and speed of storing files on a hard disk drive comes a large risk: the data could easily become lost. Operating System failures, disk failures, and computer viruses are common causes of data loss. However, it is possible to be secure against data loss- if you know how to backup a hard drive on to a backup copy media.

Thanks to the hard work of many programmers, there are now several different methods and software applications which will backup hard disks onto any sort of removable media. Tapes, CDs, DVDs, and even external hard drives can all backup harddisk drives with the correct software. This article will briefly highlight software available which will allow easy solutions using the best methods to back up hard drives from which you then can restore the data back.


Microsoft's NT Backup, a free utility, allows the ability for backing up disk drives. This utility can be accessed by selecting Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup. With this utility, automated backups can also be setup by using the Task Scheduler, which is located in the Control Panel of a Windows-based computer. However, the interface of Microsoft's NT Backup utility is rather primitive in comparison to third party products. For instance, the backup routine is often complicated to setup for incremental backups (backups that are based on a “master”, or main backup, and that backup only files that have changed), which often results in backups which cannot be restored onto the hard drive (resulting in lost data). In addition, the scheduling portion of Microsoft's NT Backup is performed outside of the software (once you have saved a backup file, which is a script that tells NT Backup what to backup). In short, there are many pieces of backup software which outperform Microsoft's NT Backup.


Dantz Retrospect, by EMC, allows the use of powerful and advanced backup features within an easy to use interface. Dantz Retrospect allows the creation of automatic backup jobs, as well as both full and incremental backups. In addition, custom filters may be created which allow Dantz Retrospect to backup only the files you desire to be backed up. For instance, Dantz Retrospect allows the creation of a backup job which will backup all of the documents in a given folder (such as “My Documents”), while allowing the program to skip over large music files. This custom filter feature allows your backups to contain only the files you want backed up- saving valuable backup media space.


Sometimes when a backup is made, it is important to backup the entire computer. Usually, backup software must first be installed (as well as an Operating System to load the software), in order to access the data which has been backed up. A product which allows a rapid data recovery time is Norton Ghost. This software creates an “image” of your hard disk, allowing you to quickly and easily backup from a copy of the entire disk. The entire Operating System, as well as any data is backed up and restored with this program. In addition, special startup diskettes may be created which will allow Ghost to restore a backup onto a new or freshly formatted hard drive. The “images” that Ghost creates are bit-by-bit copies of your current hard drive, allowing exact data restores to take place. However, the main disadvantage of Ghost is the large data file size, which is typically half of the hard drive's capacity which is being backed up. For instance, if a hard disk has 20 GB of space used, the backup is typically 10GB. This limitation should be taken into consideration when using Ghost.

Whether you require a quick backup, an advanced backup, or a complete backup, these three software applications will allow you to safely and securely backup a hard disk of your choice- protecting your data for years to come. With technology solutions such as removable USB flash drives, CDs, DVDs, tapes, and removable hard drives, your data storage has never been safer against a catastrophe.




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