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Return to Home Page Return to Curry’s Comments Backing Up Your Hard Drive by Dick Curry 5/20/2004 As you all are well aware the two subjects on computers that are closest to my heart are security and hard drive backup. With security there is a right way and a wrong way and, for the most part, one set of rules fits all. As I mentioned in my presentation to our group in May (please reference my slide presentation at: http://sir-web.org/computer/2004_presentations/may_2004_presentation.htm) there are a number of ways to approach hard drive backup and the approach I have adopted may not fully meet your requirements and constraints. Two variables discussed were frequency of backup and method. As for myself, I noted that I make a disk image of the drive containing my system software (my "C" drive) every three months (using PowerQuest's Drive Image program), and I make a normal (or complete) backup of all my drives, or partitions, (using Microsoft's Win XP backup program) the first day of every month and an incremental backup (only files that have changed since the previous backup) of all my drives on the 15th of every month. I discussed a number of media available to use for saving backup files (and the pros and cons associated with each media). I noted I favored two internal disks but stressed the advantages and ease of using an external hard drive (disadvantage: accessibility to external hard drive with Win 98 from the "A" drive in the event of a total computer crash; come formatted in NTFS). I mentioned that PowerQuest had been sold to Symantec and I expected the program, Drive Image, to be phased out. I provided information at this meeting and through several e-mails relating to Gene Barlow of User Group Relations www.ugr.com, and a number of you have taken advantage of software Gene discounts to Computer User Groups, such as ours. Gene is an expert on the subject of hard drives and has provided numerous presentations on the subject of backing up computer hard drives. In this regard I have recently received an e-mail from Gene on this subject and he has graciously consented to our re-printing his article for your benefit. I hope to see Gene next week and will obtain a copy of the Acronis True Image 8.0 program, discussed in his article, and will critique this application at a future meeting. As always, may all your computer experiences be pleasant. |