If your PC's hard disk (or the entire system
itself) suffers from a serious crash that leaves the data on the
drive beyond recovery, you'll be thankful for putting some of your
upgrade budget towards a backup drive.
This is essentially a super-sized hard disk in a
chassis that connects to your PC using USB 2.0 or FireWire. A
backup drive usually has a simple button on the front panel that
launches some supplied backup software and copies your most
precious files onto the drive. You can also use a drive "imaging"
utility such as Norton Save & Restore, Acronis True Image or
Windows Vista's own Complete PC Backup feature to take a digital
"snapshot" of the drive - every bit and byte of data.
Seagate and Maxtor both have superb one-button
backup drives but our current favourite is Western Digital's My
Book Premium, which sells for about $350 with a 500GB drive.
About Acronis:
Acronis is a leader in AI-native cyber protection, unifying data protection, cybersecurity, IT operations and hybrid infrastructure to deliver business continuity, security and compliance with less cost and complexity. More than 21,000 service providers trust Acronis to protect over 750,000 businesses in 150 countries. Acronis is headquartered in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. For more information, visit www.acronis.com.