 Number 206 - July 2000 |
| Backing Up Your Computer | ||
| by George Dybowski, Fox Tails, Fox Valley PC Ass'n April 99 | ||
|
There are many ways and
means of backing up your computer. The main thing is to backup because
your computer will fail sooner or later. Most of the time it's sooner
especially if you don't have it backed up. I have started using one type
of media to make backups of my computers: CD-R. Since CD-R media and
the actual recorder are so cheap, it's foolish to take chances with your
precious data.
Just to make sure your computer is back to normal, you decided to reload everything from scratch to make sure there are no corrupt programs in the computer that could cause it to crash again. Back to step one: reinstall, reconfigure, customize, etc., etc., etc.. This takes many hours of your time. All of this could be avoided if you use one method I use to make life and computing easier. I use a program called GHOST by Symantec, to make images of my hard drive(s). There are other programs available that do the same thing but I use GHOST. GHOST takes an image of your hard drive and creates a file, which you can store either on a Zip, Jaz, CD-R, CD-RW, etc., type of media. GHOST can span across multiple media if it can't fit the whole image onto one disk. With GHOST you don't have to worry about FDISK to set a partition, no need to FORMAT your hard drive, you can even resize the original partition to whatever you want. This is similar to PARTITION MAGIC. With GHOST, you can make an image just after you get your computer configured the way you want it. Later if you add more programs, you can make more GHOST images. This way if your computer needs to be reloaded, you can |
load a GHOST image instead and be back up
and running in a few minutes rather than hours. This is much better than
just backing up data files.
You can download an evaluation version of GHOST from Symantec, which is good for one month. This way you can try it before you buy it. With my CD-R drive, I use a program by CeQuadrat called "WINONCD". This program can make bootable CD's. I use the program to make a bootable CD and then copy the GHOST image along with the GHOST program, onto a CD-R. I can then boot from the CD1, run GHOST, and load the image onto my computer. I regularly keep two GHOST images of each hard drive. When I make a new image, I delete the oldest copy. You can get information on the programs that I use at: http://www.symantec.com/us.index.html for the Symantec web site for the GHOST program http://www.cequadrat.com/ for the CeQuadrat web site for the WINONCD program. Again, this is just another method of protecting your data and conserving your precious time. It is a great tool to use to make computing more tolerable. Happy computing! Reprinted from Fox Tails, the monthly publication of the Fox Valley PC Association. April 1999
|
|
|
Number 206 - July 2000
|
|
|