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Software: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Tips and Tweaks, Licensing, Fixing Problems, OEM Software, How to Make Restorable Backups - Page 3

Last updated on 5 May 2008

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Backup strategies and how to make backups

Introduction

Backups can be divided into two main types: system and file (data) backups.

A system backup, if properly verified, will enable the user to restore the operating system, which is usually a version of Windows or Linux, to the way it was before any kind of irrecoverable system crash occurred. Most backup software has the ability to verify the integrity of the backups it makes. If you value your data, you will value your backups, so you should only use backup software that can verify the integrity of its backups.

There are other ways of recovering an installation of Windows XP that you should try before you restore a system backup, because some of them can be implemented much faster than restoring a backup. The methods of recovery are dealt with on the Recovering Windows XP page on this site.

If you value the software and data stored on your computer, the most important requirement is having restorable back-ups of it, because the only alternative - using a professional data-recovery service - is extremely expensive.

The backup programs provided by Windows itself, usually just called Backup - under Start => All Programs => Accessories => System Tools in Windows XP/Vista - have been relatively limited and poor up to the backup program included with Windows XP, so you are advised to make use of a third-party product, some of which are discussed in more detail further down this page.

The Windows Backup that is built into Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium Editions appears to be buggy. It might be fixed with Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), which at the time of writing (January, 2008) had not been released.

This Q&A on this site deals with a problem that many users have experienced when using Vista's Backup: When I run Windows Backup in Windows Vista to copy files to a DVD I get a "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error 0x8007045D" error message.

You might prefer to use an alternative backup program. AIS Backup from http://www.aiscl.co.uk/ is inexpensive. It has a trial period of 30 days.

"AISBackup works with the following Microsoft Operating System's: Windows Vista (all versions), Windows XP (all versions), Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 RC0 (see below), Windows 2000 client and server, Windows NT4, Windows ME, Windows 98SE, Windows 98 and Windows 95 (Release 1 and 2). Some earlier versions of Microsoft Windows Operating system's do not support all the featues in AISBackup."

Here is another useful product:

FileBack PC - "Backup and synchronize files with media you are already familiar with: hard drives, removable drives, or network drives. Backup, mirror disks, or add file versioning capability to Windows." - http://www.fileback-pc.com/

However, Complete PC Backup and Restore, available in Windows Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions, allows a user to create a restorable image in the same way as third-party tools such as Norton’s Ghost do.

The Windows backup programs, including Complete PC Backup and Restore, are also covered further down this page.

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After having completely installed all of the software and data files on a computer, you should immediately create a master image of the installation, update it at regular intervals, and burn the image to recordable CD/DVD disks each time you update it. Then, if the hard disk drive fails or dies completely, you should have no problem restoring the system to a fully operational condition in between thirty and sixty minutes after having installed a new hard disk drive. Doing that is certainly very much cheaper than having to resort to using a costly data- recovery service.

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If the utility that is being used to create a master image or clone of the system doesn't do so, it's advisable to run integrity checks on the hard disk drive that you're creating a master image of, because if the drive has bad sectors, these can make the master image unusable.

Use Scandisk to run a time-consuming thorough check (not the standard check) in Windows 95/98/Me. Windows XP only has Chkdsk, which is run from within Windows, from the Command Prompt, or from the Recovery Console.

Click here! to go to information on Chkdsk on this site.

Alternatively, identify the make and model of the hard drive that you want to check in the Device Manager under Disk drives, and then download the free diagnostic utility provided from its manufacturer's website. You can find the site by entering the make of the drive in a search engine, such as Google.

The computer supplier/vendor/manufacturer might not include CDs or DVDs of all of the software loaded into the computer. If that is the case, unless you have a suitable back-up device - a CD writer, tape drive, removable hard disk drive, a large-capacity flash drive, etc. - that can hold a back-up of the whole system, you will probably have to pay a small fortune for the back-up CDs or DVDs.

If back-up CDs/DVDs of the software on the system are not provided but are available, they will probably be expensive. Probably not as expensive as the retail products, but expensive enough to make it worthwhile investing in a suitable back-up device such as a CD/DVD writer and a stack of discs.

Note that a CD-RW drive can usually write to CD-R disks (record once) as well as rewritable disks, and most DVD recorders can burn data to CD-R and CD-RW disks.

"We chose Verbatim as our choice for all of the CD-R test discs that we burned in our testing [of the available makes of disks]. Because we burned so many discs, we had to opt for the 50 pack spindle. Verbatim has been producing media that we have found to reliably give us great results in our testing. TDK was chosen to supply all of the High Speed CD-RW discs that we used for testing in this article. We used one disc per drive and fully erased the disc between each test. CD-RW media can be very useful for troubleshooting possible problems with your set up before committing the final back up to a CD-R disc." - Tom's Hardware.

Moreover, if a vendor is selling computers with pre-installed software that is not supplied on CD/DVD disks, it is worth asking the vendor to supply the computer without any software, and to adjust the price accordingly. You can then purchase retail copies of the software you want to use, and in the event of a total system failure, you will be able to restore the software. And when you upgrade it, you will also be able to sell the software through any channel of your choosing, including on-line auction sites such as eBay.

If you have a DVD writer, it's a good idea is to format the drive, reinstall Windows, and then install the most necessary programs, utilities, etc., and then create a master image of the whole system and burn it to record-once CD/DVD-R or CD/DVD+R discs or rewritable CD/DVD+RW and CD/DVD-RW discs. In the event of a system failure, the master image can be restored. After the image is restored and Windows is running, you can then install any additional programs, updates, etc., that weren't on the image.

Norton Ghost is a very popular program used to create and restore master image files of a PC system.

February 2006. - Norton Ghost 10 is available and it is widely regarded as being one of the best backup software programs currently available. If it is installed on a laptop computer with 256MB of RAM and an integrated video chip that uses 16MB of it, a warning message comes up saying that the computer doesn't meet the memory requirement, which is 256MB. However, if you ignore the message, Ghost 10 installs perfectly well. You can check the system requirements by looking the program up on the Symantec site.

Ghost 12 and Windows Vista

Note well that only the new version - Ghost 12 - works with Windows Vista.

Backup images are now called recovery points. After its installation, Ghost 10 runs its Easy Setup routine that creates the initial recovery point, which can be saved to an internal or external hard drive, to another computer on a network, or be burned to one or multiple recordable optical CD/DVD discs. The process copies the entire contents of the boot hard drive, which contains Windows, so it can take a long time even though Ghost 10 compresses the files. You should have plenty of recordable CD/DVD discs available if you can't work out approximately how many will be required. If you're using recordable CDs, you'll need many more of them than would be the case if you're using recordable DVDs because they have so much less storage space.

You can use your computer while Ghost 10 creates the master image in the background. This version differs from the previous versions in that it only creates incremental recovery points of the files that have changed after the first recovery point was created, which speeds the process up considerably. This means that if you want to restore the system, you have to restore the first recovery point and then restore all of the incremental recovery points. After a while of creating incremental recovery points, you should create a full recovery point and start the process over again so that you don't have to restore too many incremental recovery points in order to recover the system. The software schedules incremental recovery points to be made daily by default, but the user can change the schedule or opt to do it manually.

It's possible to restore individual files, folders, or the entire partition of a hard drive, which means an entire hard drive if it hasn't been partitioned into several drives. If Windows won't start up, the user can boot the system from the Ghost 10 CD. (Remember that booting from a CD/DVD means having the CD/DVD drive set as the first boot device in the BIOS setup program.)

Ghost 10 is powerful, easy to use, and comes with a good user manual.

If you want to find out what earlier versions can do and how to use them, visit the following pages.

Easy Norton Ghost User Guide - http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/NortonGhost.html

Radified Guide to Norton Ghost - http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1y.htm

Those guides shows how easy it is to use Norton Ghost to create a master image of the system, burn it to CD/DVD discs, and restore it.

However read this Q&A on this site if it is applicable to your situation:

System imaging: Are there any complications involved when you restore a backup image to a new hard disk drive or to a new PC?

Norton Ghost and Acronis TrueImage (information is provided on it below) come with recovery CDs, or, if you download them from their developers' sites, provide the utilities that create them.

Such a recovery CD contains a basic operating system that is used to boot a PC that can't boot Windows for one reason or another. After the system is running, you use the features provided on the CD to locate a master image that has been saved somewhere on the hard drive, or burned to another CD. Note that in order to boot the system from such a recovery CD, or even from the Windows CD, the CD/DVD drive must be enabled as the first boot drive in the PC's BIOS setup program.

You can make use of the Google search box provided at the top of this page - with it Web radio button enabled - to locate other such guides. I found those guides with this search term: norton + ghost + guide + xp.

You will need the 2003 version of Ghost or higher versions for proper support of NTFS (New Technology File System) - the native file system used by Windows 2000 and Windows XP - and for the improved CD-writer support. Note that Windows XP can use the FAT32 file system if you have upgraded from a Windows 95/98/Me system (that uses it as its native file system). But if you perform a clean installation of Windows XP, it will install NTFS by default unless you choose the FAT32 system instead. In other words, Ghost 2002 doesn't support Windows XP properly, so don't attempt to use it if Windows XP is your operating system and it is using the NTFS file system.

Acronis True Image 10 Home

Acronis True Image 10 Home is usually cheaper and is widely regarded as being better than Norton Ghost.

Here is what Scot Finnie, chief editor of Computerworld, says about the program in his newsletter:

"I've tried several of the major and minor disk-cloning competitors, and Acronis is the best one. Additionally, I asked SFNL readers several months ago which disk-backup program they preferred, and the resounding answer was Acronis. Many of those responding had tried most of the disk-cloning alternatives and have, over the years, worked their way through PowerQuest's DriveImage, Symantec's Ghost, and others. Acronis is their choice, and mine. Acronis True Image 10 Home supports Windows Vista, XP, 2000 SP4, and XP x64. It costs $50 online at the Acronis site. Be sure to either buy the $13 backup CD or use the Acronis software to create a bootable Acronis CD because such a CD is an essential part of your protection."

Acronis True Image - "The complete disk imaging, system disk backup, and bare-metal restore for workstations and home PCs Acronis True Image allows you to create an exact disk image for complete system backup and disk cloning providing the most comprehensive data protection. The disk backup file contains the exact copy of a hard disk, including all the computer data, operating system, and programs. After a system crash you can restore the entire system or simply replace lost files and folders from your disk backup. Based on the exclusive Acronis Drive Snapshot disk imaging technology, Acronis True Image allows you to create an online system disk backup without reboot to keep the system productive. The product provides the fastest bare-metal restore dramatically reducing a downtime and your IT costs." - http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis can be obtained free if you have a Maxtor or Seagate hard disk drive. Seagate provides a free downloadable utility called DiscWizard for Seagate drives, and another called MaxBlast5 for Maxtor drives. Both utilities are based on an OEM version of Acronis's well-regarded True Image backup application. Both of those utilities support the creation of disk images, partitions, the cloning and formatting of disks, etc.

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"The Free Edition of HDClone is the ideal tool for moving contents of entire hard disk drives onto bigger newer ones. This Edition can be downloaded for free from our homepage and fits easily on a diskette. It ships with its own operating system - Sphere SP - and is therefore not depending on other installed systems. When buying a new larger disk, HDClone copies the data for you, you only have to add the gained space on the disk via some partitioning tool, and in an instant you have the same environment as before on a larger (and faster) disk." - http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

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An excellent free back-up/cloning/synchronising program, the Replicator, can be used to make scheduled backups of any program or folder, and can update a clone of the system that exists on another hard drive or partition that was created with XXCopy.

You can read articles on how to use XXCopy on the Tips pages of this site.

You cannot use XXCopy to make a restorable master image of the system and burn it to a CD, because Norton Ghost (and other such programs) has the facility to do this and to make a created CD-R disk bootable, and XXCopy does not. An option in the BIOS of most new computers allows the system to boot from a CD, and if it does not, a bootable CD-R disk can be accessed by using a start-up floppy disk with CD-ROM drive support.

Alternatively, you can use the Windows 9x Backup program to make a back-up of the whole system, and then burn the back-up file to a recordable CD/DVD disc. To Restore the back-up would mean having to reinstall Windows in order to be able to use the Restore feature of MS Backup to restore the back-up.

In Windows XP Professional/2000 Professional you can use Shadow Copy, which can run happily as a scheduled task.

Backup in Windows XP Home Edition

If you're running Windows XP Home edition, you'll need to install the Backup utility from the Windows CD. You need to have Windows XP Home Edition on a proper Windows CD, not one of the Recovery CDs that many brand-name manufacturers supply instead of a Windows CD. Run the CD and navigate to the \VALUEADD\MSFT\ NTBACKUP folder. Double-click the Ntbackup.msi file to start the wizard that installs Backup. When the wizard's actions are complete, click Finish.

Note that the Windows Backup program creates a backup of multiple files as a single file, which most professional third-party backup programs do not do. If that backup file becomes corrupt, the whole backup would be lost.

How to Use the Backup Utility to Back Up Files and Folders in Windows XP Home Edition - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330100

Using Complete PC Backup and Restore in some versions of Windows Vista

Available in Windows Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions, Complete PC Backup and Restore allows a user to create a restorable image of a hard drive's partitions in case they need to be restored, in the same way as third-party tools such as Norton’s Ghost do.

After a backup has been created, you can use the System Recovery options from the Windows Vista installation DVD to restore an image, or the restoration can be initiated from within Windows Vista itself. However, note that you cannot restore individual files, folders, or settings.

The following MS Knowledge Base article deals with a problem with Complete PC Backup and Restore:

Error message when you try to repair or recover Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium by using Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore: "You do not have a valid backup image to restore from" - CAUSE: This behavior occurs because Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore cannot find a valid backup image that was created by Windows Complete PC Backup. -

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930436

Windows Vista: Basic File Backup and Restore

In keeping with previous versions of Windows, the Windows Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium versions for the home user still provide a basic backup and restore tool that can be used, because Complete PC Backup and Restore is not supplied with those versions.

Backup and Restore Center

The Backup and Restore Center in Windows Vista is used to manage all of its backup-related features. It is found under System and Maintenance in the Control Panel. -

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/.../backup.mspx

Flash drives

New compact portable backup storage devices called flash drives that use permanent flash memory and which plug into USB ports are now available. This kind of peripheral device looks much like a wireless USB network adapter that you just plug into a USB port. You can take it out and plug it into any other computer that can install the required Plug and Play (PnP) device drivers, such as a PC running Windows XP.

Click here! to go to the information on flash memory and flash drives on this site.

Backup/Imaging Options: http://www.langa.com/backups/backups.htm

Backup software reviews: http://www.backup-software-reviews.com/

The safest way to upgrade RAM: Use the UK and US Crucial Memory Advisors

Paul Mullen, the highly-respected computer guru of the Helpfile at ComputerShopper.co.uk - "I have recently been buying my memory only from Crucial Technology. I would rather pay the extra cost than waste time trying to track down the obscure program faults that bad memory can cause."

The memory requirements of the versions of Windows Vista

Most of the versions of Windows Vista require more RAM memory to run optimally on a computer that doesn't use memory-hungry applications than Windows XP. A video-editing application is an example of memory-intensive software. Only Windows Vista Home Basic has a recommended minimum amount of memory of 512MB, which is the same amount recommended for Windows XP. Windows Vista Home Premium, the most popular version, and Windows Vista Ultimate require a recommended minimum of 1GB (1024MB) of memory, which is twice the amount of minimum memory recommended to run Windows XP. For more information on computer memory, read the RAM pages of this site.

For example, if your computer has an Asus motherboard, open the menu, scroll down to ASUS, and click GO. If, say, you have a Dell computer, scroll down to DELL, and do likewise. You will be taken to the relevant information on Crucial's website.

If you don't know the make and model of the motherboard installed in your computer, here is a good free utility - Belarc Advisor - that creates an analysis of the hardware and software on a personal computer. Look under FREE DOWNLOAD - http://www.belarc.com/. Another utility that also provides detailed information on the memory itself is CPU-Z.

How to verify that backups and master images can be restored successfully

When you create a backup or a master image, how can you be sure that it can be restored successfully?

This is a vital question, because you can't be sure that the backup or image you created can be restored unless you actually restore it, which is impractical due to the time doing so would take even if you have a test computer available, and especially so if you only have one computer at your disposal. To be absolutely sure that they will work, you could have a test computer that you use only to verify that your backups and images can be restored, but you should never attempt to restore a backup if you only have one computer, because if it goes wrong, you will probably have wiped out the data on your computer that you backed up.

That said, there are methods which allow you to be reasonably sure that your backups can be restored when you need them. Most CD/DVD burning and imaging and backup software provides a data verification option that you can run when a CD or DVD is burned or an image or backup is first created.

For example, the Nero Express the CD/DVD burning program provides an option that checks the validity of data that has been burned to disc, and the NTbackup backup program that can be installed in Windows XP (there is more information on it further down this page), provides a Verify data after backup option under its Advanced menu.

However, with regard to backups and images, such verification can double the time the whole process takes, and so may not be worth doing every time. It is advisable to use a verification option when you first set a computer up, or when you change brands or types of CDs or DVDs in order to make sure that the new media is working properly, because some brands of CD and DVD don't work properly on some makes and models of CD/DVD drives. You should also always make a backup or master image of the system before you make major software changes, such as the installation of a Service Pack, such as Windows XP SP2, and it is advisable to verify it.

Since most backup and imaging software allows you to extract single or multiple files from it, you can use it to read files from the beginning, middle, and end of a backup/image. If the files restore properly, you can be reasonably sure the entire backup is valid, especially if you have also verified the integrity of the data.

What happens if you have created a master image and you want to restore files and folders to a new version of Windows instead of restoring the whole master image?

After you've upgraded Windows on your computer, you obviously wouldn't want to restore a master image of the previous system, because doing that would restore the previous system in its entirety, from the first down to the last file, including the previous version of Windows.

Fortunately, the better imaging utilities, such as Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and BootIt NG, can restore a full master image, or allow a user to restore files and folder selectively to the same location, or to a location of the user's choosing. Therefore, if you have imaging software that has that feature and you want to retrieve information from an old version of a file recorded in a master image of the system, but you don't want to lose the current copy of the same file, you would restore the old file to an alternative location so as not to overwrite the current version. Most good backup software also allows the user to restore folders selectively instead of restoring an entire backup, but it doesn't allow the user to restore individual files, or to change the location of the files, so using such imaging software is a more powerful option.

MS Knowledge Base backup articles

Windows XP

Windows 95, 98, and Me - No longer supported by Microsoft, but the KB articles for those versions of Windows are still available

For the links to the Knowledge Base articles on System Restore and the Recovery Console in Windows XP, click here! to go the second of the two Diagnostics pages on this site.

Visit the Recovering Windows XP page on this site for the many ways of recovering a system running that version of Windows.

You can no doubt find much more back-up information by using the Google search box provided at the top of this page.

See lower down this page for more information on Norton Ghost.

Look under the letters C and D on the first of the four Links pages on this site for some useful CD/DVD sites.

Backup and recovery programs included with Windows

Windows XP Backup

Unlike the Professional edition, the Home edition of Windows XP does not have a back-up program that is installed by default by the Windows setup procedure. There is one that is well hidden on the Windows CD, but it cannot be added as a Windows component. It is called NTbackup. You have to look for it in the Valueadd folder of the Windows XP CD, and install it from there - \Valueadd\MFST\Ntbackup.

If you don't have a Windows XP Home edition CD, you can download a copy of the NTbackup tool from Bob Cerelli's site at:

http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/ntbackup.msi

Note well that it can create a system backup, but it saves it as a single file, so if that file gets corrupted, the whole backup is lost. If you value what you are backing up, you should use a third-party backup program that doesn't store a backup as a single file.

The Files and Settings Transfer (FAST) Wizard

The Files and Settings Transfer Wizard is a very handy tool that can be used to save files and/or settings in order to transfer them from any computer running a version of Windows 95/98/Me to a computer running Windows XP. It is possible to create custom FAST files, so the utility can be used to create what are effectively custom back-ups of files and settings. But note that the destination of a file and/or setting transfer has has to be a computer running Windows XP. You can use it to save files and/or settings for your copy of Windows XP and then restore them if the computer suffers from an incurable system crash.

Help and Support in Windows XP has next to no information on this very useful tool. Visit the How to use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard page on this site for all the information on it.

System Restore

System Restore is a utility available in Windows Me and Windows XP. You should have it enabled, because it can restore the system to its former condition in the event of a system failure. When enabled, it creates restore points (dated back-ups of the system files) on a regular basis. You can also create a restore point manually just before you make a change to the system. Its inferior equivalent in Windows 98 is the Scanreg utility that restores back-ups of the four main system files that are stored in five CAB files (covering five days) that can be used by booting in DOS mode and entering the scanreg /restore command.

Windows XP also creates a restore point whenever you install an unsigned driver, a software program that controls a hardware device but which hasn't been certified by the driver labs at Microsoft as being Windows-XP compliant.

You enable System Restore by opening the Control Panel, and double-clicking System. In the System Properties window, click the System Restore tab, and use your mouse to uncheck the Turn off System Restore option. Use your mouse to move the Disk space slider as close to the maximum setting as it will go, because the more space you allocate, the more restore points Windows is able to accommodate. To run System Restore, click Start => Programs => Accessories => System Tools. It should be obvious how to create restore points. The Restore option allows you to choose a restore point to restore. If you need them, there are full instructions on how to use this feature under Help/Help and Support, depending in the version of Windows being used.

You can also back up specific parts of the Windows Registry, or individual Registry keys, by entering regedit in the Start => Run. You use the Export feature under the File menu.

Backing up over a network

If you have a home network consisting of two or more PCs, you can make one of the PCs the backup server so that you can back up any of the files on other PCs on the network to its hard disk drive.

If you connect an external hard disk drive to the PC chosen as the backup server, you can disconnect it and store it in a safe place, such as a fireproof safe, or take it off the premises for safekeeping.

Another option is to make use of a network attached storage (NAS) device. This is a hard disk drive that works as a network server, which makes itself available to all of the other PCs on the network. Using such a device, it is possible to have all of the PCs on the network switched off and still back up a laptop/notebook computer from a remote location via a wireless router to the NAS device.

Automated System Recovery

Windows XP Professional version supports a back-up and recovery feature called Automated System Recovery - ASR - that makes use of a floppy disk to recover the system's configuration files, but you should note well that the Home edition of Windows XP does not support it fully. It allows the creation and saving of the system-state back-up file, which is usually over a gigabyte in size, but cannot restore it. This is probably why Microsoft has hidden NTbackup (NTBackup.exe) program on the Windows XP Home CD, because it is used to create the ASR back-up file.

Note that only the configuration files such as the Windows Registry files are backed up or restored, not ordinary data or program files, which should be stored on recordable CDs or DVDs, Therefore, since all of the programs and data files have to be restored after the operating system itself has been restored, it should only be used in an emergency when all other options have failed to recover the system.

The ASR feature in the Professional edition of Windows XP allows the back-up to be restored without reinstalling Windows, but you can also format the hard drive, reinstall Windows XP, and then run ASR to restore the settings.

Using NTBackup

If you want to restore a much larger back-up of actual system and program files made with NTbackup in the Home edition of Windows XP, you would have to reinstall Windows manually in order to restore it. This is an inferior back-up solution because being able to restore the system and program files without reinstalling Windows and your applications is ideally what you would want to achieve.

NTbackup doesn't support disk-spanning, and you cannot use it to back-up directly to a CD-R/CD-RW or DVD-R / DVD+R / DVD-RW disks. So, you have to create a back-up set that is less then the capacity of a single CD-R/RW disk (usually 650MB), and then burn the back-up file to the disk, or use a recordable DVD disk, all of the types of which have a much greater capacity. Click here! to go to the third Disk Drives page on this site for more information on CD and DVD drives and disk capacities.

Norton Ghost and Drive Image

The latest versions of Norton Ghost and Drive Image support Windows XP, and disk-spanning, but an even cheaper solution is called FileBack, which can be downloaded from:

http://www.maxoutput.com/FileBack

This program can mirror (clone) a drive, and has a version-rollback feature for documents that make it possible to go back to a previous version if something goes wrong with the current version of a document.

Norton Ghost and PowerQuest's Drive Image are primarily designed to create restorable images of the system. They both have the ability to back up folders and files to recordable CD/DVDs, but these abilities are limited.

Note that PowerQuest's Drive Image has ceased to exist. No newer versions will be created because Symantec, the creator of the Norton programs and utilities, such as Norton Internet Security and Norton Ghost, took PowerQuest over. Instead of continuing to produce new versions of Drive Image, Symantec has incorporated its technology into Norton Ghost.

If you find the Help files that tell you how to create a master image of a system that are an integral part of Norton Ghost or Drive Image, there are plenty of free tutorials available on the web. For example, try using this search phrase - "norton ghost 2005" + tutorial - as is, in the Google search box provided at the top of this page.

If you want to use a complete back-up program specifically designed to back up to CD/DVDs that costs only £19.99 and can be used on trial for 30 days, try AISBackup from http://www.aiscl.co.uk/.

Not being able to restore a back-up at all, or restore a back-up completely is a common complaint. Click the link to read an article on this site called Why didn't a restored back-up restore properly? It contains information about data recovery and the difference between differential and incremental back-ups.

Using Winzip to make compressed, encrypted, password-protected backups

WinZip from http://www.winzip.com/ can be used to compress, zip up, and password-protect files as .zip files.

WinZip 10.0 is the latest version. The two most important features introduced in version 9 are support for 128-bit and 256-bit AES encryption, and support for very large files. The password-protection available for .zip files has been weak since they were introduced. The passwords are easily broken by many free cracking tools available on the web. However, a cracker would have his work cut out to crack a 256-bit AES encrypted password and file. Nothing is ever completely secure, including this level of encryption, but it's more than adequate for all normal security needs.

It should now be possible to place the whole system in a single, highly compressed zip file, and place it anywhere on a system, copy it to a recordable DVD disk, or even copy it to other computers on a network.

Backing up the Linux operating system

There is an excellent program called BootIt Next Generation that can be used on any operating system, including Linux. It can create back-ups, create, delete, copy, move, and resize partitions, and create restorable master images of a system. It is also a boot manager. BootIt can image FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, Ext3 and ReiserFS file systems by writing the images to hard disk drives or to CD-R / RW or DVD+R / +RW / -R / -RW drives. Costing only $35, it's very good value.

Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO -

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/

Backup Linux Software: Backup Solutions -

http://linux.about.com/od/softbackup/Linux_Software_Backup_Solutions.htm

How to back up your Linux machines [registration at the site is required] -

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/l-dw-linuxbu-i.html

You can find other links by entering linux backup in the Google search box provided at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled).

Click here! to go to the page devoted to Linux on this site.

How to use software and hardware RAID as a backup solution

Click here! to go directly to the information on using a RAID array of hard disk drives as a back-up solution on the first of the Disk Drives pages on this site.

High-speed, high-capacity USB CompactFlash drives

The smaller of the high-speed USB CompactFlash drives (64MB, 128MB, 256MB), known by several names such as thumb and pen drives, have enough permanent flash memory to make them a viable on- and off-site back-up option for data files. The drives with the highest capacities now have enough flash memory to store an entire system made up of the operating system, the applications it runs, and the data files that the applications generate. Current drives offer capacities between 1GB and 4GB, with 8GB capacities on the way, with, of course, the promise of still larger drives in the future.

Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, and other memory manufacturers have brought out lines of inexpensive second generation USB 2.0 thumb drives that are smaller, faster, and weigh less than the previous generation. The pen drives are no wider than their USB 2.0 connector, which is accessed by removing the drive's cap.

Visit the US http://www.crucial.com/ site, or http://www.crucial.com/uk for the UK site to see examples of the flash drives Crucial sells.

To lose data on burned CD/DVD disks only requires the disk to be damaged or scratched, and it is known that recorded disks have a limited shelf life that can be as low a five years for cheaper makes of disk.

However, Flash drives are very durable, and the data stored in one will remain intact as long as the drive can be accessed, which is effectively for as long as there are computers that have USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 ports, because the drives can work on the earlier and slower USB 1.1 ports. It is known that the drives can survive and still be accessed after having gone through a full washing cycle in a domestic washing machine.

Tha data reading and writing rates vary from drive to drive, but they are fast. For example, Kingston's Data Traveler Elite has nearly a 20MB/s (20 megabytes per second) reading rate, and up to 12MB/s writing rate, and has integrated data protection by providing optional 128-bit DES hardware encryption. Corair's Flash drives have a reading rate of almost 20MB/s, a writing rate of 14MB/s. Moreover, the rubber cladding around them makes them waterproof and well suited for outdoor use.

Click here! to go to more information on this site on Flash memory and the devices that use it.

Portable USB backup drives

Pen drives, thumb drives, jump drives, keychain drives, they carry many different labels, and they can employ varied technologies, but they all have a few features in common: they're compact, removable drives that attach to a computer via a USB port to add anywhere from 16MB to over 4GB of portable back-up storage to a computer.

Click here! to go directly to more information about these drives on the USB page on this site.

Iomega REV backup drives

Iomega REV drives offer a cheap easy to restore back-up solution, hold up to 90GB of compressed data on a single disk, and come as internal or external removable versions for the PC and Mac that look much like USB floppy disk drives.

Click here! to read more about them on this site.

Magneto-optical drives for the safest back-ups

CD/DVD disks containing a back-up or a master image of the system can be rendered unusable if they become deeply scratched. Therefore, if the security of back-ups or archiving data is of crucial importance, using a magneto-optical drive would be the safest option.

The data is recorded magnetically, but the data cannot be destroyed by an extrenal magnetic source, as is the case with HDDs and floppy disks, because it can only be removed or recorded if the disk is heated to a specifically high temperature by its formatting/recording laser. That is why it is called a magneto-optical drive. Moreover, if the disks were lost or stolen, they could only be accessed by using a magneto-optical drive, because the disks cannot be read by a CD/DVD drive. A thief is unlikely to possess such a drive, because at present they are not rarely used in this country. There is also no limit to the number of times a disk can be wiped and re-recorded, whereas CD/DVD writers can usually only be used about a thousand times.

The downside is the cost of the drives and the disks, which are much more expensive than CD/DVD writers and media.

Google searches

If you want to make your own searches of the web for software or information about software, you can make use of the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled).

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PC Buyer Beware! Copyright © Eric Legge 2004-2008. All rights reserved.