I now have a full image backup copy of my PC hard drive.
I have been researching full disk imaging software for awhile now and finally settled on one.
Anyone that has ever tried to do a full image backup of their hard drive with the operating system and all associated files knows how difficult that can be. The Windows system for backup is not the best. If you only want to copy the files without the operating system it will work OK with a hard disk but will not function with other media forms. If it is your desire to be able to make a complete “C drive” disk image while the computer is running from the “C drive” then special software will be required.
One of the concerns that I have had is my internal hard-drive is quite old, with a lot of customer files, programs, and special applications that would be a real pain to rebuild from scratch. The software I selected has a number of features to completely clone a drive image, backup completely, or do incremental backups automatically.
The cool thing about this one was the program was very intuitive to operate from the get-go and then was very easy to verify that it created another image on a large extra internal drive in my PC. It even gave it a new letter “G” as a new partition and mounted hard disk with a password protection so no one would alter the data. It also created a bootable disk on a CD-R. This would be used in the event of a catastrophic failure or if a virus infected the system and a recovery was necessary. Will also work with CD-RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, and even to a network disk, USB, SCSI, or FireWire drives. Other features include: selectable data compression, copy all operating system files, can function in the background, schedule full or incremental backups, and the ability to restore or extract selected files. As I stated above, one very important feature I was looking for is to be able to clone a hard drive so everything was exactly the same as the original hard drive.
Here is what you have been waiting for. The name of the software is: Acronis True Image.
Product Features
- PC Backup and Recovery of Systems, Applications, and Files – Have you ever accidentally deleted a file, had a virus corrupt your files, or had a disk fail?
- Fast and Easy Backup and Recovery – Acronis True Image Home 2011 provides complete system image backup and recovery of your home PC’s operating system, applications, settings, and personal files.
- New Windows 7 Integration – True Image Home 2011 scales to the needs of novices and advanced users alike
- New Graphical User Interface – We have redesigned our recognized user-friendly interface with new features like Drag and Drop for faster navigation.
- Continuous Data Protection – Acronis Nonstop Backup automatically creates incremental backups every five minutes allowing users to roll back their systems, files, and folders to any point in time in the past.
OK, now I have peace of mind. Next step is to get another large internal hard disk and clone the current drive, swapping out the old and put in the new.
Got to get back to work. Professional Web Services, Inc., Internet marketing and online advertising services specialists.