In a recent article about how I use Acronis True Image to back up of my computer, I wrote about using Acronis True Image to make an image of my C: drive (my C: partition) to an external drive or to another computer, so that I can reinstall it in its entirety. This saves me from having to reinstall Windows, find all my device driver disks, find all my program disks and reinstall the programs, locating and installing all the add-ons that I want to use in Firefox, and many more such tedious tasks.

In a comment on my Terry’s Computer Tips blog, a subscriber requested that I write about how to use Acronis True Image to back up to CDROM’s or to DVD’s, as many people don’t have home networks.

Rather than recreate all the images that are common between the “Schedule Task Wizard” (which I used last week) and the “Create Backup Wizard” that I’m using for the DVD example, I’m just changing the images that are different. (it doesn’t make sense to me to use the scheduler for DVD backups, since I wouldn’t be there to change DVD’s when needed.)

Continue reading Using Acronis True Image to Back Up to DVD’s

EJ wrote to ask about backing up his computer:

Terry, what program do you use to back up your files

I use two programs routinely.

First, every evening, I use Karen’s Replicator (www.karenware.com, free for personal, non-business use) to copy my data files to another computer across my home network. Not only does this give me a backup copy in case of the inevitable, accidental error (such as editing a file, saving it, and then realizing that I forgot to save it with a different file name), it also gives me a backup in case of a failure of my hard drive.

Replicator lets me set up multiple tasks and specify the day of the week and the time for them to be performed. If I set several for the same time, they will run in the order listed.

I also use Replicator to make a backup of certain files on my hard drive to another location on my hard drive. This gives me an easily accessible copy for that brain-freeze error.

Then, on a weekly basis, I use Acronis True Image Home 11 to make an image of my C: drive. I have True Image set to store that image on another computer on my home network.

Continue reading Backing Up Your Files

If you’ve been using computers for any length of time, you’ve had the problem.

Maybe you haven’t had a hard drive fail, yet, but you’ve managed to delete or overwrite one of your data files with a changed version — and immediately said “Oh, NO!”

Most people have the problem and have no way to recover a copy of their older version. But you can, if you make a habit of backing up your data.

Karen’s Replicator ( www.karenware.com ) is a great program that I use for making backup copies of my data files. With Replicator, I can schedule backups of any modified files as often as I like. I can back up to a different directory on my hard drive, to a different hard drive (internal or external) or even to a directory on a shared drive across my home network.

By scheduling a daily backup of my data files, I know that…

Continue reading Data Backup versus System Backup

You’ll find it really hard to find one as small as 30-40GB today.

The smallest regular external drivve that I’ve seen advertised in a long time is 160GB. These will use normal desktop-type hard drives and will have a power brick that plugs into the wall.

There are some really small GB sizes today — they have notebook drives in them and are about paperbook size — and are usually designed to plug into your PS2 ports or 1 or 2 USB ports to get their power.

Read more in Getting an External Hard Drive

One of the easiest ways to back up your hard drive — whether you have one big C: drive or several partitions — is to use a program that does image backups.

For years, I used a program from PowerQuest called Drive Image. It saved me a lot of time, both in migrating from old hard drives to new hard drives and in recovering from massive problems. I remember that I could copy the backed-up image of a fresh Windows 95 installation, including WordPerfect, Netscape, network card drivers, video drivers and such, onto one CDROM. To restore the hard drive took less than 10 minutes — as opposed to the hours of Windows installation, looking for diskettes, installing programs, etc.

But, backing up my hard drive this way became much more of a bother as the drives became bigger and bigger.

Read more in Backing Up Your Hard Drive