By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted July 2013
Doing regular backups of your computer system is the most effective way to protect your computer from the loss of your important files and expense of repairing a crashed computer. There are many backup systems available today, which make picking the best backup approach somewhat difficult. In this article, I will describe the five most common backups approaches used and explain which is the best and why.
RAID Mirrored Hard Drives
Businesses have used RAID mirrored systems for years to keep their critical servers running even if one of their hard drives should fail. A RAID mirrored system consists of two identical hard drives in the computer. When one hard drive is updated, RAID automatically updates the second hard drive in exactly the same way. If one of these two identical hard drives should physically fail, the computer can continue to run on the other hard drive without any down time on the server.
Recently, home computers have become available with the option of a RAID mirrored system. End-users mistakenly think that a RAID mirrored system is a form of backup. It is true that if one of the two RAID hard drives fails because of a physical problem, then the other RAID hard drive is a form of backup. Unfortunately, most hard drive crashes are caused by software failure (80% probability) and not hardware failures (20% probability). So, if your Windows operating system becomes corrupted or a virus attacks your computer, the RAID system makes sure that both of your RAID mirrored drives crash at the same time. Running a RAID mirrored system is not a good backup approach.
File Backup System
Thirty years ago, backup systems could only back up individual files, one at a time. Today, the best backup systems backup entire hard drives and not just individual files. Yet, over half of all backup utilities on the market today still only backup individual files. File Backup Systems save only your data files that you have selected to be backed up. Application programs and the Windows operating system files are not saved with file backup systems. So, at best, these are just partial backup systems and not complete computer backup solutions.
If your computer should fail and all that you have is a backup of just a few of your data files, then you will have to take your computer into the repair shop to have Windows reinstalled on your computer along with all of your application programs. This could be an expensive fix and leave you without a computer for several days. File Backup Systems are antiquated and do not properly protect your entire hard drive. Don’t rely on them for the primary backup of your computer.
Online Backup Systems
The past few years, the speed of the internet has opened up the possibility of saving your backup files on the internet. Companies have popped up promoting the ability to backup your files to a location on the internet. Even Acronis offers a Cloud Backup option.
The first thing to understanding about Online Backup Systems is that these are also just file backup systems, only backing up a few of your data files. The Windows operating system and your application programs do not get backed up to the Internet. So, if your computer should crash, you would still have to take the computer into a repair shop to have Windows and all of your application programs reinstalled. Again, this could be costly.
Also, there is an annual fee that companies change you to save your backups on their internet servers. The Acronis Cloud is one of the most reasonable in this area at just under $5 monthly or $50 annually. Online backup systems are only partial backups and can be costly to run.
Hard Drive Clones
One of the earliest ways to backup your entire hard drive was the disk copy or clone approach. With this approach, you make an exact duplicate of your main hard drive onto a second physical hard drive. While this approach does backup your Windows operating system and all of your application programs with your data files, it has many limitations. The biggest limitation is that it takes an entire additional hard drive to make just one clone backup drive. Since you really need a minimum of three backups to protect your system, a single clone backup is very risky and not a good way to do backups.
Another limitation of the clone backup approach is that it involves a lot of physical replacement of your hard drives. A clone backup system done right should have three physical backup hard drives that are rotated through your computer system each week. Most end-users are not comfortable opening up their computer box to remove and replace hard drives. This is a cumbersome backup approach that most end-users should avoid.
Image Backup System
The best way to backup your computer is by doing weekly image backups of your computer’s main hard drive. This approach includes not only your important data files, but the Windows operating system files and all of your application programs. In other words, you backup everything stored on your main hard drive. Then, if your main hard drive should crash, you can quickly restore the entire main hard drive from your backup and be up and running again in minutes. This is the backup protection that businesses use today.
You may think that it is too complicated to do an image type of backup. Actually, it is much easier to do your backups this way than to have to pick and choose which individual files to backup and which files not to backup. The File Backup System and the Online Backup System are much more complicated to run than the Image Backup approach.
You also may think that backing up all of your hard drive would take too long and use up too much space on the backup drive. Actually, since backing up an entire hard drive can be done as one backup operation instead of having to backup each data file individually, Image Backup Systems run much faster than the File Backup Systems and very much faster than the slow Online Backup Systems. As for space used, a full Image Backup System can be backed up many times on a backup external hard drive that is the same size as your main hard drive. Clone backups wastefully take a separate physical hard drive for each backup made. Image Backup Systems are the best way to do backups today.
Acronis True Image Backup Utility
The best backup utility on the market today is the Acronis True Image Home 2013 software product. Using it, you can do most of the backup approaches discussed in this article; however, I highly recommend you do the Image Backup approach mentioned above as your main backup approach. Then if you want to also do one or two of the various other backup approaches in addition to the Image Backup approach, you can do it with the same True Image software package.
You can order copies of Acronis True Image Home 2013 from us at substantial discounts in price. Our discount price is half of the normal retail price for this excellent backup utility. Not only that, we provide our customers with additional support that others do not offer. We provide a step by step True Image 2013 Starter Guide that you can only get when you purchase your product from us. In addition, we offer our customers unlimited technical assistance when they have questions or problems. Acronis offers you only 30 days of Technical Support and then you are on your own. We want our customers to succeed using the True Image 2013 software they get from us.
To order Acronis True Image Home 2013 from us, go to www.ugr7.com and select the products you wish to purchase. Once you are on that product’s page, click on the appropriate Buy Now button to place your order. We charge only $25 for a single license or $60 for a three license Family Pack. You can order a download copy or we can mail you a CD with the software on it. (There is a $5 shipping fee per order if you order the CD.) When checking out of the shopping cart, enter in the special order code of UGNL0713.
If you have questions about this article or the True Image 2013 product, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.
User Group Relations
Copyrighted July 2013
Doing regular backups of your computer system is the most effective way to protect your computer from the loss of your important files and expense of repairing a crashed computer. There are many backup systems available today, which make picking the best backup approach somewhat difficult. In this article, I will describe the five most common backups approaches used and explain which is the best and why.
RAID Mirrored Hard Drives
Businesses have used RAID mirrored systems for years to keep their critical servers running even if one of their hard drives should fail. A RAID mirrored system consists of two identical hard drives in the computer. When one hard drive is updated, RAID automatically updates the second hard drive in exactly the same way. If one of these two identical hard drives should physically fail, the computer can continue to run on the other hard drive without any down time on the server.
Recently, home computers have become available with the option of a RAID mirrored system. End-users mistakenly think that a RAID mirrored system is a form of backup. It is true that if one of the two RAID hard drives fails because of a physical problem, then the other RAID hard drive is a form of backup. Unfortunately, most hard drive crashes are caused by software failure (80% probability) and not hardware failures (20% probability). So, if your Windows operating system becomes corrupted or a virus attacks your computer, the RAID system makes sure that both of your RAID mirrored drives crash at the same time. Running a RAID mirrored system is not a good backup approach.
File Backup System
Thirty years ago, backup systems could only back up individual files, one at a time. Today, the best backup systems backup entire hard drives and not just individual files. Yet, over half of all backup utilities on the market today still only backup individual files. File Backup Systems save only your data files that you have selected to be backed up. Application programs and the Windows operating system files are not saved with file backup systems. So, at best, these are just partial backup systems and not complete computer backup solutions.
If your computer should fail and all that you have is a backup of just a few of your data files, then you will have to take your computer into the repair shop to have Windows reinstalled on your computer along with all of your application programs. This could be an expensive fix and leave you without a computer for several days. File Backup Systems are antiquated and do not properly protect your entire hard drive. Don’t rely on them for the primary backup of your computer.
Online Backup Systems
The past few years, the speed of the internet has opened up the possibility of saving your backup files on the internet. Companies have popped up promoting the ability to backup your files to a location on the internet. Even Acronis offers a Cloud Backup option.
The first thing to understanding about Online Backup Systems is that these are also just file backup systems, only backing up a few of your data files. The Windows operating system and your application programs do not get backed up to the Internet. So, if your computer should crash, you would still have to take the computer into a repair shop to have Windows and all of your application programs reinstalled. Again, this could be costly.
Also, there is an annual fee that companies change you to save your backups on their internet servers. The Acronis Cloud is one of the most reasonable in this area at just under $5 monthly or $50 annually. Online backup systems are only partial backups and can be costly to run.
Hard Drive Clones
One of the earliest ways to backup your entire hard drive was the disk copy or clone approach. With this approach, you make an exact duplicate of your main hard drive onto a second physical hard drive. While this approach does backup your Windows operating system and all of your application programs with your data files, it has many limitations. The biggest limitation is that it takes an entire additional hard drive to make just one clone backup drive. Since you really need a minimum of three backups to protect your system, a single clone backup is very risky and not a good way to do backups.
Another limitation of the clone backup approach is that it involves a lot of physical replacement of your hard drives. A clone backup system done right should have three physical backup hard drives that are rotated through your computer system each week. Most end-users are not comfortable opening up their computer box to remove and replace hard drives. This is a cumbersome backup approach that most end-users should avoid.
Image Backup System
The best way to backup your computer is by doing weekly image backups of your computer’s main hard drive. This approach includes not only your important data files, but the Windows operating system files and all of your application programs. In other words, you backup everything stored on your main hard drive. Then, if your main hard drive should crash, you can quickly restore the entire main hard drive from your backup and be up and running again in minutes. This is the backup protection that businesses use today.
You may think that it is too complicated to do an image type of backup. Actually, it is much easier to do your backups this way than to have to pick and choose which individual files to backup and which files not to backup. The File Backup System and the Online Backup System are much more complicated to run than the Image Backup approach.
You also may think that backing up all of your hard drive would take too long and use up too much space on the backup drive. Actually, since backing up an entire hard drive can be done as one backup operation instead of having to backup each data file individually, Image Backup Systems run much faster than the File Backup Systems and very much faster than the slow Online Backup Systems. As for space used, a full Image Backup System can be backed up many times on a backup external hard drive that is the same size as your main hard drive. Clone backups wastefully take a separate physical hard drive for each backup made. Image Backup Systems are the best way to do backups today.
Acronis True Image Backup Utility
The best backup utility on the market today is the Acronis True Image Home 2013 software product. Using it, you can do most of the backup approaches discussed in this article; however, I highly recommend you do the Image Backup approach mentioned above as your main backup approach. Then if you want to also do one or two of the various other backup approaches in addition to the Image Backup approach, you can do it with the same True Image software package.
You can order copies of Acronis True Image Home 2013 from us at substantial discounts in price. Our discount price is half of the normal retail price for this excellent backup utility. Not only that, we provide our customers with additional support that others do not offer. We provide a step by step True Image 2013 Starter Guide that you can only get when you purchase your product from us. In addition, we offer our customers unlimited technical assistance when they have questions or problems. Acronis offers you only 30 days of Technical Support and then you are on your own. We want our customers to succeed using the True Image 2013 software they get from us.
To order Acronis True Image Home 2013 from us, go to www.ugr7.com and select the products you wish to purchase. Once you are on that product’s page, click on the appropriate Buy Now button to place your order. We charge only $25 for a single license or $60 for a three license Family Pack. You can order a download copy or we can mail you a CD with the software on it. (There is a $5 shipping fee per order if you order the CD.) When checking out of the shopping cart, enter in the special order code of UGNL0713.
If you have questions about this article or the True Image 2013 product, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.