Which Method Of Laptop Backup Is Best For You?

There are two different laptop users from a backup perspective!

1. Business users that normally have access to a data network in the office over a LAN (Local area network).
2. Users which have no access to a LAN. These are small business users, students or home users.

Many business and office people use their laptops in different location so that they can work at any location and have access to their computers outside of the office. They use laptops when they are traveling or when they are working from home.

This make their laptops extra vulnerable as laptops are prone to theft. As laptop computers are moved about it is also susceptible to shakings and the hard disk and other sensitive components can be damage.

Learn more about different laptop protections!
Desktop computers stay in a much more stable environment.

This vulnerability makes it extra important to have a notebook backup strategy that is implemented. Despite this backup of laptops is often neglected.

Backup in these cases can be made to a local sever in the office. However this is seldom implemented as it is not always practical to do in a busy environment

A full computer backup and a partial backup are two different things.

If you connect the laptop to the LAN either directly or by docking it you can transfer the data you want to backup to the local server.

This may take time especially if the hard drive have large amount of data. Of course as an alternative you can use a removable tape drive to make the laptop data backup, but it will take time to do the laptop backups this way.

An alternative is to backup the disk to a writeable CD-ROM or DVD player which is often installed on modern laptops. If you copy only the application data you are working with the demand of data space is much lower. In this case you can store your data on a Zip drive or on a USB drive.

The application program and operating system can always be installed again if you have to move to a new computer or if the hard drive fails.

An attractive alternative is to store the document and other data files you are working with on a remote storage facility. By doing this you can have scheduler and make the backup over the Internet.

Users which don't have a connection to a LAN lack the option to make a laptop storage to a network in an office.

Of course it is still possible to backup data to a remote storage facility using the Internet. There are a large number of companies which offer that service and the prices are going down. The downside for customer is that the amount of data on laptops and desktops is increasing with each new version of operating system and application program now in daily use.

It is not always practical to transfer the large amount of data over the Internet needed to make a full backup.
The best solution is to only backup the data you are working with and not the application programs and operating system.

You then need to keep copies of the installation program and operating system you have bought in a safe place and keep record on any program you have downloaded from the Net. By doing this you are able to install a working copy of your data.

It is much easier to use other data backup media if you only backup the data you are working on.
Here you have a number of options which backup limited amount of data like:
USB backup media or ZIP drives.

You can also do a backup of files using a file transfer program between two computers. A typical case is between your laptop and a desktop computer.

This is what often is the case as many people keep the same data on a desktop and have the laptop as a movable accessible computer. Laptops are commonly use for demonstration purposes to demonstrate a software product or for PowerPoint demonstrations.

You can and should also do a full laptop backup of your hard disk from time to time. This can be done to a tape drive or to a built in CD or DVD player.
Most computers sold today have in built DVD player and recorder.
The amount of data that can be stored on a DVD is sufficient to backup from hard disk on just one or two DVDs.

What you should look for if you want to backup a full hard drive is to use disk image backup software to do the full notebook backup. With the backup of your hard disk image you are able to much faster recover and restore your data back to your hard disk.