Imaging basically takes an exact copy of all the data on your computer. (quickly and easily)
Drive Image copies the partition, and not data like other back-up programs.
You can store this image on another partition, another hard drive, or on removable media like Zip, Jazz, CDR/CDRW. You can not store an image on tape. Drive Image will let you split up the image so it's small enough to fit on removable media.
When I create an image (exact copy of all my data on my hard drive) it takes about 20 minutes, but I am taking an image of 5.5 gigabytes of data. Restoring is about the same time. If I was using traditional back-up methods, backup and restore would be MUCH LONGER.
The best method I found for storing these images, is on another hard drive installed on my computer. That hard drives sole purpose is for BACK-UP; holding images from C: and critical data. At times I can have 6 or more images of C: taken at different intervals. I usually keep images back about 2 months.
The reason for another hard drive, is it's unlikely that two hard drives will fail. In the past I have had drives as new as 3 weeks old die.
Any time I install a new piece of software I take an image of the hard drive, in case I have to restore it back if I don't like the software. I sometimes have to delete an older image to make room for the new one.
My bullet proof backup system:
Message 15266328
Everyone has their own way of backing up, this one works the best for me. And it was because of this thread that I found out about Drive Image, and dumped my tape backup drive.
When backing up critical data, (data that changes in-between imaging, ie: Word Docs, Bookmarks, Address Book, etc, etc) always backup to removable media as well, in case the computer is stolen, your data is still safe. You can always buy new software and hard ware, but you can't replace years of data. |
