Computer Backup
Nothing has to be more upsetting then working for days on a project that is important to you, on your computer, to have something happen that causes all of your hard work to just disappear!
As you start to sweat, because this always happens at the worst possible moment, you can hear your inner voice tell you: “You should have backed this up”.
As you finish pulling out your hair in utter frustration, and hunker down to re-create your work of art, you make a promise to yourself to never ever let this happen again!
The trouble with this scenario is we make a decision to computer backups based upon emotion response instead of making it with a solid, usable plan. Plans made in this fashion are usually forgotten and not before long, we find ourselves in the same frustrating situation.
You need to test anything you see on the Internet on a computer you don’t mind loosing everything on. Don’t fool with your live system!
If you have taken the time to build a battle plan when it comes to performing your computer backup, you will find that there is a lot of programs you could spend your money on and lots of advice that you can follow. Unfortunately, as always, some is right, some is wrong and some is outdated! I can tell you this fact because I spent a couple of months building a solid computer backup strategy for the company I worked for and tried just about everything, within reason, available.
Computer backups need to be broken down into a couple of functional steps to ensure you create a backup strategy that fits your situation.
- A computer backup will start automatically at set intervals, require human intervention, or a combination of both.
- A computer backup will either perform a raw disk copy or a file level copy.
- A computer backup will backup the whole drive every time or only the changes from the last backup.
- How do you access your files within a computer backup?
- And most importantly, can you completely recover your files with ease and without problems?
I’ve come across several really good methods of backup. I’ve found a majority of them center around performing drive images and not file backups. The sutle difference is you are able to better ensure you got the whole drive backed up when imaging it, which is not so with standard file backups.
Over the next couple of months, I’ll be writing detailed articles on computer backup pro
ducts that I’ve found that work well and are trustworthy. None I’ve seen to date are really ‘user friendly’, unless you speak computer geek. So I will also be working on some great articles and videos showing the nuts and bolts of how to get the most from your computer backup software. If you wish to get access to these articles as they are completed, please take a peek on the right hand side of my page and register to get your free copy of the report ‘7 Expert Computer Secrets Revealed’. That way you won’t miss a thing.
Backups don’t need to be painful and you don’t need to feel like you never know if your precious files, pictures and music is backed up. Remember to register. You won’t regret it, the next time your computer makes you want to find the nearest hammer!
July 1st, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Computer backups can be a real pain. Why? Well, it lies with the complexity of dealing with files that are currently open while performing a backup. Basically, how can you backup a file that is currently being altered.
This is one of the reasons backups for computer people is such a pain at the best of times. Fortunately, a relatively new technology has really started to mature. Computer disk imaging.
With computer disk imaging, you backup your files not at the file level, but at the disk level. Whenever someone opens a file to edit it, most modern operating systems will retain a copy of the pre-opened file that will be backed up through disk imaging.
This is why I really like disk imaging. You can perform great backups of simple and complex computer systems. Plus restoring your system is much less painful then traditional backup systems.
I’ll be diving much deeper into the concept of using disk imaging with computers and servers in my bi-weekly newsletter. Sign up and get all the details as I put them into print.
Cheers,
Frank.