If you run a business learning how to back up your computer or PC is NOT an option; many businesses have learned this the hard way when they lost money, time, or even closed their doors due to data loss from a dead hard drive or a virus.
How to Backup Your Computer
OR Regret is the most expensive thing…
If you’re not a business owner but just an average user, you should also learn how to back up your computer. Family photos are irreplaceable, iTunes libraries can be expensive, and important documents can be lost due to hard drive failure, viruses, or accidental deletion.
Learning how to back up your PC can solve this annoying and often catastrophic event known as data loss.
There are many ways to back up a computer: you could use a flash drive or burn CDs and DVDs, use an off-site or on-site back up, or use an external hard drive, among other choices.
Which one is the best, easiest, most reliable, and worry free (as in you don’t have to remember to do anything)?
If you’re like the average person or small business the answer lies in backing up your PC with a technique known as imaging.
The benefits: it can be automated, and it backs up the WHOLE hard drive (operating system, programs, files, settings) where most methods only back up certain types of files.
I can attest first hand to the virtues of imaging your computer; about 4.5 years ago my hard drive died. I went and bought a new hard drive, installed it, and restored my image.
Total time: about 2 hours, and I was up and running like nothing had ever happened with all programs, files, and settings in their original state.
I used Acronis True Image to image the hard drive every other day, and restore the latest image.
“What’s that” you ask?
Find out here: Get Acronis
(If you’re already an Acronis user you can update to the latest version at a discounted price)
Let’s compare this to the other types of backups:
Let’s start with backing up the HARD way and assume you need a new hard drive for some reason, so the factory recovery partition won’t work (or maybe you just can’t figure out how to get the factory recovery partition to work. Many manufactures obfuscate this on purpose so you call them or buy a new PC).
Step 1: Buy new hard drive and install it.
Step 2: Re-install whatever version of Windows you had. Wait, you’ll need a CD or DVD with the operating system to do that and many newer PCs didn’t come with a recovery disc; they came with a recovery partition on the hard drive and you were suppose to burn discs yourself. Some new laptops and notebooks don’t even have a CD drive. Damn.
Didn’t burn those recovery discs? Have a notebook without a CD drive? Looks like you’ll need to call a computer repair company and pay them $100 or more to reinstall Windows.
If you lucked out and did burn the discs or your computer actually came with them, you can reinstall Windows, and assuming everything goes right (sometimes it doesn’t), you’ll have a bootable computer in 1-3 hours.
Step 3: Next you’ll need to make sure your drivers are installed. Don’t know what a driver is? Not sure where to find the drivers? Don’t know which ones you need?
Where’d that computer repair guy go….?
Step 4: Then it’s time to re-install all your applications and programs. Go dig up all the install discs or download links and the serial keys. Can’t find them? More trouble for you.
Re-install each program one by one. This usually isn’t very hard for most programs, but can be tedious and VERY time consuming. Depending on how many applications you had, this can take several days.
Step 5: OK, you’ve installed your programs and activated them. Now time to re-install the printer or any other peripheral device you may have. Where’s those darn discs again…?
Step 6: Finally, you can restore your data once you find the right place to restore it to.
Not sure where it goes?
Better hit your favorite search engine to find out or call the computer repair company again.
Step 7: Finally, you can do the fun stuff like get your desktop picture and screen saver back to where they were along with all your other settings.
Hope you get the point.
Backing up your computer with image backups is a heck of a lot easier.
Do yourself a favor and avoid the pain of this very probable scenario.
I am a fan of Acronis True Image, which is a program that can be automated (you don’t need to remember anything) and used to copy your hard drive. It’s less than $50; an external hard drive to store the PC back-up on can be had for less than $100. Just make sure to get one that is at least as big as your computer hard drive so it can hold the complete image.
Acronis is easy to use and easy to automate and it has multiple options to set it to your needs. It can be downloaded and purchased at:
Get an external hard drive online, or at your nearest electronics or computer store.
And if you have more than 1 PC, Acronis discounts the price.
You’ll sleep better knowing your kid’s birthday pictures are safe, along with your Quick Books files, and iTunes library.
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