August 21, 2009

Best Ways to Backup Hard Drives


Do you have trouble thinking of the best methods to backup your hard drives?. Well, hard drive backup does make for an interesting topic, so that's why this article is here.

In this article, we'll look three of the best methods to backup hard drives and give you peace of mind, knowing your precious data is safe and sound. let's get started right away...

Method 1 : Create A Drive Image
The first approach to hard drive backup is to use a good backup software to create a disk image. Why is this one of the best methode to backup hard drive? well, because it is a tried and tested method and all the big corporations use this approach as the standard.

A drive image is nothing but a detailed representation of every bit and byte in your gard disk. Once you create a drive image, you're free to restore it to any hard drive you want. PC just crashed? No problem. Restore the drive image into a new hard drive. I like to create a drive image and revert to a clean hard disk image in case some virus or malware affect my PC.

Norton Ghost is one of the best product in the industry for creating a drive image. I've used it since the days of DOS, and it has proven time and again to be at the top of its game. The latest version supports windows xp and incremental backups meaning you can create on drive image snapshot and keep adding changes to it.

Acronis true image is a competing product which has gamered many awards too. I haven't tried it out. But I certainly will, since many have raved about its performance and easy-of-use.

Method 2 : Backup to Another Hard Drive, CD or DVD
Another best method to backup hard drives is to use another hard drive. What do mean by another hard drive?.Well, you can simply copy your existing important data to another hard disk in desktop PC. Another approach is to get an external portable hard drive and copy your stuff there.

Of Course, you should understand that there are risks. The second drive that you backup to may also fail. Some alternatives are to use CD and DVD media for backups as they are much less likely to fail compared to hard drives.

Method 3 : Use an Online Backup Service
Using an online backup service is also fast becoming one of the best methods to backup hard drives, essentially, these services allow you to store gigabytes of data online for a fee.

The huge advantage of online backup services is that they are resilient to disaster and theft. If you were to backup stuff on your own, then in the event of disaster or theft, you lose everything. Online backup services however haver huge clustered servers that are designed to withstand such calamities.

The downside of online backup services would be the cost. However, these are fast coming down.

Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has shown you the best methods to backup your hard drive. Try to applying any one of the above methods the next time you feel you need to backup data. If you backup data in the above ways on a regular basis, i can guarantee you'll have a much smoother computing experience.

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