The Sun Tech Today(Malaysia)

March 12, 2007

by N. Shashi Kala

Back it up or lose it

The Single Most Important Advice Given to Computer Users Is Also Often the One That's Commonly Ignored — Backing Up Your Data

How many times have you heard someone complain bitterly that they have lost all their data — the Word documents, the spreadsheets, the 2000 songs painstakingly reaped from their CD collection — all because the PC had crashed.

If you even dare to ask if they had, by any chance, backed up their data, you'll be faced with a blank stare, or worse, a tirade about how difficult, impossible or inconvenient it is to do regular back-ups.

Is it really so difficult to back up your important data, or even your entire system so that, in the event of a crash, you could be up and running in minutes? Actually, no. There are many good software programs available that take the pain out of manually backing your "can't-live-without" data into removable media such as CD-R/RW, DVD-R, flash drives, as well as internal or external hard disks.

One of the better back-up utilities is Acronis True Image from Acronis. The latest release of this widely like complete system back-up tool, Acronis True Image 10 Home, has gotten even better, because, unlike older versions, it goes beyond the ability to make a complete copy of everything on your hard drive.

Acronis True Image 10 Home — which is also compatible with Windows Vista — gives you the option of backing up files — meaning you can choose the particular file or folder to back up, either onto another media (CD-R, DVD-R etc) or another drive on a network. You can also now back up to an FTP site — a really useful feature that comes into its own when migrating servers.

Acronis True Image 10 Home file back-ups are made easier thanks to a user-friendly touch — it offers you likely categories to backup, such as finances, documents, music, videos, photos or allows you to copy the contents of specific folders (such as My Documents) or filetypes.

Even emails and contact lists (from MS Outlook and Outlook Express) can be backed up easily, as can the settings for common applications such as browsers, design tools, digital photography, IM settings, and History, iPod software, security and spyware applications etc.

Now you can easily schedule backup tasks — be it full, incremental or differential backup, in your desired order.

This software version also allows automatic management of user archives, which will help get rid of outdated backups, preserving disk space and reducing clutter.

After a system crash, Acronis True Image allows you to perform a full system restore, a bare metal restore or just restore individual files and folders in minutes.

There are two unique features that enable users on the road a way to recover their systems and get back to work by accessing the Acronis Secure Zone^® — a special partition on a system where images can be saved and which is completely hidden from operating system and all applications.

The Acronis Recovery Manager allows users to initiate recovery by selecting the F11 key. Used together, a user on the road can recover a failed laptop with no network connection and no bootable media — now that's spectacular.

This product is targeted at home users/power users and retails for RM190.