Backup Your Hard drive Now — While You Still Have Time

Photo by Sister72

It’s one of those nagging things in the back of your mind: “What happens if my hard drive crashes, or the operating system gets corrupted, or…? I should do something about it.” Then you dismiss that thought because you think it’s too hard, or expensive.

It’s really not that difficult, nor expensive. We’ll look at a couple of options that give you an easy way to protect your investment. The basic strategy is to create an “image” of your hard drive, which is a file (or files) containing an exact copy of your operating system, applications, etc. Then, when disaster strikes, you boot from a CD, and restore that image file to your hard drive. Let’s look at the steps to do this.
External hard drive: You could back up your hard drive to an image file on the hard drive itself. This could be useful if the operating system became corrupt, but if the hard drive physically crashes (has a mechanical failure), you won’t be able to restore the image.

Consider buying an external hard drive. They don’t cost much, and you can use them for other purposes like backing up your data. Newegg.com has a great selection.

Software – 2 Options
Commercial software: Acronis TrueImage 11 Home is a good choice. It currently costs about $50. Acronis offers a fully-functional trial version (good for 15 days) if you’d like to try it out.

Free software: DriveImage XML from Runtime Software will meet your backup/restore needs. Here is their tutorial which show how to use DriveImage XML to back up your hard drive:

To restore your image with DriveImage XML, you’ll need to create a Windows PE CD. Here are the directions you’ll need. In order to create the PE CD, you’ll need a Windows XP CD. If you don’t have one, Pricewatch is a good place to purchase a copy.

Conclusion

Having your hard drive imaged,and a way to restore that image is “cheap insurance”. If your hard drive has a software problem, these steps will equip you to get back up and running quickly. If your hard drive has a mechanical failure, you (or your service technician) can replace your hard drive, then restore your image.

We will look at even better strategies for your personal disaster recovery plan, but if you’ve never backed up your hard drive, following these steps can help resolve that nagging question about what to do when, not if, you run into software or hardware issues on your computer.