Difficult Made Simple: Single-Pass Backup

We often find ourselves lost in translation when it comes to the current trendy computing world full of innovations and breakthrough technologies. We use new words and terminology that make computing life even more difficult than it truly is. 

More than six months ago, I started a series of blog posts simply describing new computing trends and technologies and I don’t want to stop. Here is another technology that I would like to simplify – Single-Pass Backup.

I really admire the inventors of all those major home appliances that make our lives easier every day. How much time do those washing machines or dishwashers save us each day by washing stained clothes or dirty dishes? Every one of us has probably experienced this once: the dishwasher is broken and while service is on its way you have to clean every single piece of kitchenware on your own. Plates and glasses are not that bad, but pots and pans are such a pain…

In a similar way, backup of your data could be painful, especially if you take a file-level approach. Looking up specific files, designating the respective backup locations, setting up separate backup jobs for each group of files – it takes precious time, requires knowing exact file paths and finally, what is probably the most important, won’t help if your entire system goes down.

You never wash your clothes one-by-one in your washing machine, unless they are different colors. But even then you only wash if you have a full load, so why would you take a different approach for data protection?

Single-pass backup can create an image of your entire disk or partition that includes all your files and folders, as well as your operating system and precious applications, such as Microsoft SQL, SharePoint and Active Directory. During the backup process single-pass technology catalogs your data and applications enabling you to later on browse and recover specific items when you need them without restoring the entire image.

In other words, you can wash all your clothes at once and pull out that button-up shirt to move it into the dryer so it’ll be ready for the party tonight. No more multitudes of backup jobs, no more storage space to accommodate multiple backups, no more lengthy backup windows to ensure all files are protected. All you need is one single backup job that in fact can be used on multiple computers. One single backup file that allows different types of recovery – be it an entire disk, SQL database, a SharePoint item or a single Word document. 

After Thanksgiving Dinner I found myself in front of the sink full of dishes. That was indeed a huge pile. It would take me hours to get it all cleaned up, but luckily my dishwasher was there to help. Five minutes to offload the plates and I could get back to a holiday movie with my family. You always have something more important to do than set up those multiple backup schedules, leave it for single-pass backup – set it once and feel free to put your attention on something else.

Best yet is you can even test out how Single-Pass Backup works for yourself – take a test trial today of Acronis Backup & Recovery to see how much easier it can make your life!