By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted May 2007
For the past few years, I have recommended the Perfect Backup Approach as the best way to backup your computer’s hard drive (see www.ugr7.com). I have lectured on this topic, published a tutorial on it (see www.ugr7.com), and have personally advised many of my friends to use this approach. From my research, this is clearly the best way for end-users to backup their hard drives today.
I am always surprised when some users prefer a different backup approach to use. My concern is that they may not have given the various approaches a thorough comparison. I hope this article will help users compare the various backup approaches and learn why the Perfect Backup Approach is the best one to use.
Another factor to consider is what needs to be backed up on your computer. Your data files are important items that need to be backed up regularly. But that is not enough. Our computers are very complex and contain tens of thousands of files that are changing constantly. The effort to rebuild our computer software may take days or weeks to complete. Today, we must backup our entire hard drives and not just a few data files.
This article will compare the four most popular backup approaches in use today. I hope it will help you understand why the Perfect Backup Approach is the best of the bunch.
Four Backup Approaches
There are four backup approaches that are commonly used on personal computers today. These are the following:
I will briefly describe each of these four approaches and then try to describe the comparisons between these four approaches that concern most end users. Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition is the only backup product on the market that can do all four of these approaches, so no matter which approach you choose, True Image is the best backup utility to use.
File Backup Approach: The File Backup Approach is the oldest and most common backup method used on personal computers. I would estimate that of the dozens of backup utilities available, 90% of them are file backup utilities. With this approach, you select which of the many files stored on your main hard drive to backup and the utility will copy each of these files individually to your backup device. It is possible to select all of the files on your main hard drive to backup, but this approach is not very good as we will see later.
Clone Backup Approach: This approach became popular a few years ago to let you adequately backup your entire hard drive. With the Clone (or Copy) Backup Approach, you make an exact copy of your main hard drive to another hard drive inside your computer. Then if anything happens to your main hard drive, you simply replace it with the cloned hard drive and you are up and running again. While this approach seems simple and straight forward, it is not a very efficient way to do backups today.
Full Backup Image Approach: The imaging approach copies the physical sectors of your main hard drive to the backup device instead of copying each file separately. So, the backups were much faster than individual file by file backups. Images could also be quickly restored to a new hard drive on your computer and let your computer be used again in a few minutes. The backup images could also be compressed to save room on your backup device. While much better than the first two backup approaches, this is not the most efficient way to store your backup images.
Full & Incremental Backup Image Approach: The next step in improving the backup technology came when Acronis introduced True Image that could make not only full backup images of your main hard drive, but could also make incremental backup images of just the changes to your hard drive since the last backup was made. This permitted frequent backups to be taken for maximum protection, but still conserves your backup storage space. Combined with an external hard drive to save your backup images on, this was the basis of the Perfect Backup Approach and is the best way to do backups today.
Backup Approaches Compared
The following table compares the four backup approaches commonly used today to let you see how one approach stacks up against the other approaches. The comparisons are kept small in size to let you quickly compare the various approaches. I think that the Perfect Backup Approach will stand out as clearly the best of the bunch as you read this comparison.
Summary of Backup Approaches
The following is a brief summary of the various advantages and disadvantages of the four backup approaches.
File Backup Approach: This approach is generally the slowest method of doing a backup. You need to find and specify all of your files to be backed up by this approach, which can be time consuming and difficult to do. Its ability to backup your full hard drive and get it working again after a hard drive crash is poor and complex. I would only recommend this approach for backing up a few important data files. That leaves you exposed when your entire hard drive crashes. It’s an old approach and complicated to use. Avoid the File Backup Approach.
Clone Backup Approach: This approach is sometimes used to protect you from a hard drive crash. It is not a very efficient way to backup your entire hard drive since it requires an entire backup hard drive for each backup you do. A minimum of three physical backup hard drives would be required to do this approach decently. You also need to continually swap hard drives inside and out of your computer box with this approach. This requires you to be a computer mechanic or pay for extra hardware to help remove the internal hard drive without opening your computer box. This approach is costly and requires a lot of physical drive swapping for an inefficient way to do backups. Another approach to avoid.
Full Backup Image Approach: This backup approach uses modern technology to do its job. Backups are fast and cover your entire hard drive and not just a few selected files. While a restore is required to put your main hard drive back in operation, this is usually very fast. With condensed images, you can also store several full backup images on your backup device, so it is fairly efficient in the backup storage space. This is a good second approach to consider.
Full & Incremental Backup Image Approach: This is the Perfect Backup Approach that I have recommended for years. It is an excellent way to backup your entire hard drive and you can rebuild a working hard drive in a few minutes. It is also an excellent way to backup your individual files that have recently changed. The incremental backup system makes this automatic and easy to do. Using the incremental images, you can save many backup images on one external hard drive. It is the fastest and most space efficient way to do your backups.
Acronis True Image 10.0 Home
The Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition backup utility is the top rated backup utility on the market today. As I said earlier, it can do all backup approaches covered in this article. So, you can try them all without having to learn a new backup utility for each approach.
To get you started to backup your computer, we offer Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition at an excellent discount price of just $33 on a CD ($29 as a download). This product normally sells for $50. To make it easy for you to start to use this excellent product, you can order the CD for $33 plus shipping. The CD contains the Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition software, a 45 minute tutorial on the Perfect Backup Approach, a step by step guide to installing and using the product on your computer, and the entire True Image users guide from Acronis. So, order the CD and get all of these items ready to go on the CD.
To order the product, go to www.ugr7.com and in the backup section of the web site you will find a description of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. Click one of the Buy Now buttons under the description of True Image to purchase either the download or the CD. The special order code for this item is UGNL0607.
I hope this article helps you to choose what backup approach you want to use on your computer. If you have not started to backup your computer on a regular basis, now is the time to get started. If you have been using an older version of True Image, you should really get the latest Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition with all of the new support for Windows Vista and for automatic backups. If you have any questions about True Image or this article, please send me an email to gene@ugr7.com and I will be happy to assist you.
User Group Relations
Copyrighted May 2007
For the past few years, I have recommended the Perfect Backup Approach as the best way to backup your computer’s hard drive (see www.ugr7.com). I have lectured on this topic, published a tutorial on it (see www.ugr7.com), and have personally advised many of my friends to use this approach. From my research, this is clearly the best way for end-users to backup their hard drives today.
I am always surprised when some users prefer a different backup approach to use. My concern is that they may not have given the various approaches a thorough comparison. I hope this article will help users compare the various backup approaches and learn why the Perfect Backup Approach is the best one to use.
Another factor to consider is what needs to be backed up on your computer. Your data files are important items that need to be backed up regularly. But that is not enough. Our computers are very complex and contain tens of thousands of files that are changing constantly. The effort to rebuild our computer software may take days or weeks to complete. Today, we must backup our entire hard drives and not just a few data files.
This article will compare the four most popular backup approaches in use today. I hope it will help you understand why the Perfect Backup Approach is the best of the bunch.
Four Backup Approaches
There are four backup approaches that are commonly used on personal computers today. These are the following:
- File Backup Approach
- Clone Backup Approach
- Full Backup Image Approach
- Full & Incremental Backup Image Approach (aka Perfect Backup Approach)
I will briefly describe each of these four approaches and then try to describe the comparisons between these four approaches that concern most end users. Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition is the only backup product on the market that can do all four of these approaches, so no matter which approach you choose, True Image is the best backup utility to use.
File Backup Approach: The File Backup Approach is the oldest and most common backup method used on personal computers. I would estimate that of the dozens of backup utilities available, 90% of them are file backup utilities. With this approach, you select which of the many files stored on your main hard drive to backup and the utility will copy each of these files individually to your backup device. It is possible to select all of the files on your main hard drive to backup, but this approach is not very good as we will see later.
Clone Backup Approach: This approach became popular a few years ago to let you adequately backup your entire hard drive. With the Clone (or Copy) Backup Approach, you make an exact copy of your main hard drive to another hard drive inside your computer. Then if anything happens to your main hard drive, you simply replace it with the cloned hard drive and you are up and running again. While this approach seems simple and straight forward, it is not a very efficient way to do backups today.
Full Backup Image Approach: The imaging approach copies the physical sectors of your main hard drive to the backup device instead of copying each file separately. So, the backups were much faster than individual file by file backups. Images could also be quickly restored to a new hard drive on your computer and let your computer be used again in a few minutes. The backup images could also be compressed to save room on your backup device. While much better than the first two backup approaches, this is not the most efficient way to store your backup images.
Full & Incremental Backup Image Approach: The next step in improving the backup technology came when Acronis introduced True Image that could make not only full backup images of your main hard drive, but could also make incremental backup images of just the changes to your hard drive since the last backup was made. This permitted frequent backups to be taken for maximum protection, but still conserves your backup storage space. Combined with an external hard drive to save your backup images on, this was the basis of the Perfect Backup Approach and is the best way to do backups today.
Backup Approaches Compared
The following table compares the four backup approaches commonly used today to let you see how one approach stacks up against the other approaches. The comparisons are kept small in size to let you quickly compare the various approaches. I think that the Perfect Backup Approach will stand out as clearly the best of the bunch as you read this comparison.
Summary of Backup Approaches
The following is a brief summary of the various advantages and disadvantages of the four backup approaches.
File Backup Approach: This approach is generally the slowest method of doing a backup. You need to find and specify all of your files to be backed up by this approach, which can be time consuming and difficult to do. Its ability to backup your full hard drive and get it working again after a hard drive crash is poor and complex. I would only recommend this approach for backing up a few important data files. That leaves you exposed when your entire hard drive crashes. It’s an old approach and complicated to use. Avoid the File Backup Approach.
Clone Backup Approach: This approach is sometimes used to protect you from a hard drive crash. It is not a very efficient way to backup your entire hard drive since it requires an entire backup hard drive for each backup you do. A minimum of three physical backup hard drives would be required to do this approach decently. You also need to continually swap hard drives inside and out of your computer box with this approach. This requires you to be a computer mechanic or pay for extra hardware to help remove the internal hard drive without opening your computer box. This approach is costly and requires a lot of physical drive swapping for an inefficient way to do backups. Another approach to avoid.
Full Backup Image Approach: This backup approach uses modern technology to do its job. Backups are fast and cover your entire hard drive and not just a few selected files. While a restore is required to put your main hard drive back in operation, this is usually very fast. With condensed images, you can also store several full backup images on your backup device, so it is fairly efficient in the backup storage space. This is a good second approach to consider.
Full & Incremental Backup Image Approach: This is the Perfect Backup Approach that I have recommended for years. It is an excellent way to backup your entire hard drive and you can rebuild a working hard drive in a few minutes. It is also an excellent way to backup your individual files that have recently changed. The incremental backup system makes this automatic and easy to do. Using the incremental images, you can save many backup images on one external hard drive. It is the fastest and most space efficient way to do your backups.
Acronis True Image 10.0 Home
The Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition backup utility is the top rated backup utility on the market today. As I said earlier, it can do all backup approaches covered in this article. So, you can try them all without having to learn a new backup utility for each approach.
To get you started to backup your computer, we offer Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition at an excellent discount price of just $33 on a CD ($29 as a download). This product normally sells for $50. To make it easy for you to start to use this excellent product, you can order the CD for $33 plus shipping. The CD contains the Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition software, a 45 minute tutorial on the Perfect Backup Approach, a step by step guide to installing and using the product on your computer, and the entire True Image users guide from Acronis. So, order the CD and get all of these items ready to go on the CD.
To order the product, go to www.ugr7.com and in the backup section of the web site you will find a description of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. Click one of the Buy Now buttons under the description of True Image to purchase either the download or the CD. The special order code for this item is UGNL0607.
I hope this article helps you to choose what backup approach you want to use on your computer. If you have not started to backup your computer on a regular basis, now is the time to get started. If you have been using an older version of True Image, you should really get the latest Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition with all of the new support for Windows Vista and for automatic backups. If you have any questions about True Image or this article, please send me an email to gene@ugr7.com and I will be happy to assist you.