Backing Up Your Data
Doing a backup of your data is essential. You run the risk of running into inordinate hardship in restoring your files if you ignore this vital task. What's more, it can be done so easily. If you get into the habit of setting up a simple backup routine, a mishap with your computer can be dealt with by simply restoring the backed up files onto another computer.
Data Backup Software
There are a number of backup options available. All are easy to implement and can be tailored to suit your individual circumstances. Backup software is supplied either with your external hard drive or NAS device, or sold separately.
- Disk Drive Imaging typically provides a complete backup of your computer, its operating system and all the data files. Superb at restoring your entire computer onto a new hard drive, should the hard drive fail. The initial backup takes some time, as the copy is done on a very low level. Subsequent backups will copy only changed data, and are much faster.
- Data Backup involves a program that initially copies all files selected by the user, then subsequently backing up only the files that have changed since the full backup. Compared to disk imaging it does not back up the file system. Thus, if the hard drive of your computer crashes, you will first have to restore the operating system (like Windows XP or Mac OS X) before you can restore the data. An advantage of a data backup is that many backup programs store the data in a format that is readable by other computers. Therefore, installing a backup program is unnecessary to recover the files. It is also less expensive than drive imaging software.
- Manually Copying Data simply involves copying data to a storage device manually. Easy to do if you do not have a great deal of data, but tedious if you have slightly more complex requirements or files scattered over many directories.
Backing up your computer can be done onto hard disk, tape or DVD. Good practice dictates that your backup is kept separate from the computer(s) you are backing up.