Like I said in my previous post we will be doing a big move soon and one of my major undertakings prior to the move is to make sure that the data in my laptops--a Toshiba Satellite; a Toshiba Portegé; a Fujitsu Ultraportable; and an HP Media Edition--are backed up. I'm enumerating them so more or less you get a picture of how much is there to carry just in case we decide to have all four laptops hand-carried from source to destination. No way!
I don't know yet, but my best guess is, we'll probably take only two of the four to be hand-carried and the other two will either be air-shipped or put in the check-in luggage. With that, there is a chance that something could happen with the laptops and their data en route. Worse case scenario would be that the data will be corrupted. You know electronic devices, usually when they are subjected to certain temperature changes, shock, impact and other unwarranted handling procedures while transported, they have a tendency to malfunction and with respect to computers, the only sure way that you can preserve your data no matter what happens along the way, is to back it up.
How do we back up data? Typically if there isn't much data to back up any form of storage media can be used like CD-ROMs, usb memory sticks, flash memory cards and other removable memory devices that don't necessarily have to hold much memory capability. On the other hand, if the data that you want to back up already spell Gigabytes of content then an external drive or any mobile storage media will suffice provided it has ample storage space that ranges typically from at least 40 Gb to up to 120 Gb depending on the need. If you notice also, there are a lot of online backup services. They are mushrooming everywhere and it's up to you to verify how stable the sites are because these days’ internet sites come and go like the changing of the seasons. If you do have highly sensitive information, you do not want to compromise data security so making sure that you can trust the site is really a very important consideration.
What's my choice? Well, for now I'm still not ready to use online backup services--not that they cannot be trusted but because I just don't want to go through the hassle of sharing my data and uploading them from point x, my relative location, to some point y somewhere in the internet. Besides, I feel that I will still have full control of my data if I just back them up myself. I got a Matrix mobile storage device with a 40Gb memory capacity since I have about 27 Gb of data to backup. That still leaves me ample space for storing other stuff.
Now, comes the hard part. How do I backup these data? For those of you who do not know, you can back up your data using Windows XP's (this is my OS) utility software--Backup. You can activate this by going to your Accessories folder then clicking on System Tools. I didn't want to go through the hassle of downloading a third party software to do the task so I opted to use Windows XP’s backup utility only to find out that I cannot complete the task because it required me to insert a bootable disk as soon as the backup session was almost completed. The disk I believe will contain all pertinent data about the backup and the interface for recovering or restoring data and without it, it's not possible to recover the data that I just backed up. I didn't have a bootable disk drive in my laptop so I ended up aborting the sequence.
So I was left with a dilemma as to which third party software to download so I can efficiently back up my data. After a thorough search, I came up with two possible candidates: SyncBack and DriveImage XML. Both of these backup software are downloadable for free. Both are very popular. Both have good reviews. The first one being an old favorite, the latter being a new favorite, as well. Naturally, I went for the one with the unquestioned record in terms of performance--SyncBack. It has a good interface. It was easy to use, though, I didn't know what happened when I used it. It worked a little slower than I expected. There were moments when I literally have to bite my finger, as I try to figure out what the software was doing when all I can see on my screen was just the hourglass instead of my cursor and it was really getting on my geek patience meter. It seemed as though it takes a painstaking while for it to refresh after you browse the different drives to set up both the source data to be backed up and the destination where the backup files will be stored. Actually the interface was easy to work with. There was even an option to select easy (for beginners) and expert (for advanced users) menus to work with. I just didn't have the patience though for its time-consuming browsing of drives.
After giving up on SyncBack, I downloaded DriveImage XML and used it. Voila! It was just great. I was able to backup my data at a breeze. The interface was very user-friendly and I think this backup software is much better than most popular backup software out there. The good thing about this DriveImage XML is that it creates image files of the data that you back up and store them in XML files, thus, after backing up your data, you can browse through these images, view them and extract files using third party tools. You basically get a glimpse of what sort of files and documents are sitting in your backup file. Take note that most backup software create backup data whose value only comes to light as soon as you lose your data, so the backup data literally sits there until it's needed. An ordinary user wouldn't be able to appreciate it because the backup data cannot be viewed unless you have used it to recover data that you have already lost. This on the other hand creates a backup that is never useless. DriveImage XML even lets you copy directly from drive to drive. For now though, this backup software can only be used with Windows XP, Home & Professional editions, and Windows Server 2003.
If you need a good backup solution for a Windows-based environment, one that doesn't leave you in the dark in terms of what kinds of files and documents you have just backed up, you should give this freeware a try. You will not be disappointed, that I can guarantee you.
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