Jan 11, 2008

How to Back Up a Hard Drive - Syncback & Drive Image XML


Use to Not Lose - The essential Syncback backup program...

Image From Stock.xchng by CWMGary

My previous post described cleaning up a hard drive for optimization. The next important step perhaps, is to back up your hard drive contents, either as individual data files (e.g. document, photo’s, software installation set up, mp3’s, etc) and their folders, and/or the whole drive contents as an image. I use both methods for back up of my hard drive and it’s contents. Though, I make sure to delete and uninstall folders and programs that I don’t really need or hardly use prior to backup.

Ideally, file and folder back ups should be performed regularly to another drive, partition, USB external drive, flash or pen drive, online site, or CD/DVD discs. You could easily manually copy the folders or better yet, use an automated program like the powerful freeware SyncBack program (V 3.2.14), which is ideal to use with a external hard drive. Start by creating one or more folders on the external drive with relevant names (e.g. daily backup, weekly, or monthly if desired). Once Syncback up is installed, create a new profile perhaps with a name that corresponds to the folder on the external drive (e.g. daily backup).

Then select your source directory (usually C drive) and sub directories if you want (depending on importance to back up) to save the folder(s) to the destination directory. You can also set up other profiles (e.g. weekly, monthly) even in group mode. Also the actual nature of the back up can be selected, e.g. new data only, overwrite current destination data, synchronization, select or filter file types, etc, for specific data transfer. A good feature is the simulation mode to test how successful a real back up would run. You can also e-mail notification of a backup profile completion, or error logs by using the expert button.

The scheduler is also useful, once you have your profiles fully set up, of which you can automate a schedule for back up. Then there is the option to save online using the FTP option, - i.e. transfer your data to your FTP server online, with Zip compression. Overall a powerful and essential backup program for transferring data for that added security...

For a image backup, the free DriveImage XML would be ideal. Here the entire drive is imaged or copied (i.e. all sectors, all folders and files including system files, operating system and updates, installations, etc). You can back up logical drives and partitions as images - which you can then browse, view and extract files. Also you can restore the whole image back to the drive or another (has to be larger than the original drive). Direct drive to drive copying can also be performed.

DriveImage uses Microsoft's
volume Shadow Services (VSS), allowing creation of safe "hot images" even from hard drives currently in operation. Because images are stored as XML files, these can be processed with 3rd party applications for further analysis. Hard drive backup can be performed in raw mode (also copies unused space) and compressed mode to reduce space storage. I have used this program with my Bart's PE boot disc (where you use XP to create a boot disc), in case if you cannot boot up your hard drive. It's a easy program to use both for back up and restoration...



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7 comments:

Mayur Pawar said...

To restore a difficult drive which has been corrupted can turn out to be simple when you have software program that can help you recover all of your deleted documents. You most likely gave up individuals documents as becoming lost forever. But whatever the sort of documents they're, a great application ought to recover them - data documents, audios, videos, image documents and zip documents and emails are all within the scope.

Regardless of whether you've lost your documents simply because of hardware or software program failure or virus or just by becoming careless you can have them back. It ought to be an exciting round recovery application that could be part of file safety strategy for pros just like network staff and house users alike. Hard Drive Data Recovery Software are offered totally free generally on world-wide-web.

Unknown said...

Why you use a lot of softwares for a simple thing like backup . For example Dmailer http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html can do it all and is also free and has some interesting features .
Backup should be simple and not that complicated ,so all people no matter how much they know about computers will be able to backup their data.

Unknown said...

Why you use a lot of softwares for a simple thing like backup . For example Dmailer http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html can do it all and is also free and has some interesting features .
Backup should be simple and not that complicated ,so all people no matter how much they know about computers will be able to backup their data.

Unknown said...

Why you use a lot of softwares for a simple thing like backup . For example Dmailer http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html can do it all and is also free and has some interesting features .
Backup should be simple and not that complicated ,so all people no matter how much they know about computers will be able to backup their data.

Unknown said...

Why you use a lot of softwares for a simple thing like backup . For example Dmailer http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html can do it all and is also free and has some interesting features .
Backup should be simple and not that complicated ,so all people no matter how much they know about computers will be able to backup their data.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
itsjustme said...

i used DriveXml to make a backup of my HDD, my son had lost the .xml file and all I have now is the .dat file-- I am at a loss!! What can I do it is a 160 gb