Cloudeight Specials! - Registry Mechanic 20% Off - Spyware Doctor 20% Off

The importance of keeping full backups
Windows all versions

You've heard it often - Backup your computer! Normally, the only time anyone listens when you tell them to backup their computer is right after they've just got done losing everything after Windows went belly-up and left them with no option but to reinstall Windows -or worse- use the "restore" disk that came with their computer. Either way, whatever was on their computer is gone - they lost it all.

Backups come in different flavors. There are those of you who do what we call "piecemeal backups". You backup a folder of pictures here, a folder of MP3s there, a folder of documents and so forth. But, we're going to tell you what's going to happen if you do it that way. You're going to forget something important. And, of course there's those programs you didn't backup, registration keys that you forgot to save, etc.

There's only one kind of backup that makes sense, and it's called a "Image" backup. Nope. It has nothing to do with images as you know. It has to do with creating a mirror image of your hard drive. A clone of your hard drive. If something goes terribly wrong, you simply use your "image" to completely restore your hard drive. You don't lose a single thing. Not a setting. Not an email. Not a picture. Not a document. You lose nada - zilch. And you don't have to reinstall Windows or register Windows or any of that other frustrating, time-consuming stuff. Why? Because when you make a clone of your hard drive, it backups byte-by-byte everything on the hard drive, including Windows.

It makes no sense to do piecemeal backups anymore. Hard drives are too big, computers and the information you store on them is too important, and image-based backup programs are relatively inexpensive - usually less than $50.00. If you think about it, that's pretty cheap. If something goes terribly wrong with your computer and Windows gives up the ghost, you simply boot with the bootable DVD or CD you made when you installed your image backup software, find your latest backup and replaced all the data on your hard-drive with the "drive image" (clone) you created.  In less than 20 minutes you'll be up and running and you won't miss a beat.

We're familiar with two image backup programs. Norton Ghost and Acronis. Acronis is, by far, the easiest to use for most of you who don't want to become computer nerds. In a few mouse clicks you'll have your image backup created - and you can use scheduled incremental automatic backups to keep your backups up-to-date.

No matter what backup program you decide to use, there's only one kind to use - one that makes a mirror image of your hard drive. We recommend Acronis True Image - because it works and it's easy to use. Norton Ghost is also good, but not as easy to use. (For those of you  who can't believe your eyes - when you see us saying nice thing about a Norton product, we really aren't. Ghost wasn't created by Norton, it was purchased by Norton and they've decided not to put their trademark bloat into it. So far, it's still good.)

Still Acronis True Image Home 2009 is our choice becuase it's easy to use and comes with easy to understand instructions. Most of you will be able to figure it out just by looking at the program's interface.

First, you must created a bootable CD or DVD so in case you cannot boot into Windows you can still access Acronis to restore your computer using the image backups you've created. Acronis makes it easy with the built-in Acronis Media Builder. Just insert a writable CD or DVD into your CD/DVD RW drive and Acronis does the rest.

If you like, you can use the one-click method to back up your system - which will allow you to recover from a severe system problem with prevents you from booting into Windows.

The recommended method though, is to set Acronis to do automatic, incremental backups at intervals of your choosing.

Just open the Backup Wizard, tick the box next to Incremental (recommended). The first time you run this backup it will do a full clone or image of whatever drive you select - in most cases the first backup should be your Windows drive - which for most of you is Drive C:\ .

After you select you options and press "Next" you'll be presented with scheduling options - set the interval you'd like your system to be backed up (for instance "Once a week", click OK and you're all set. Acronis will create the backups automatically for you.

In case your wondering, Incremental Backups are backups where once a full backup has been created only the changes you make to the drive are backed up. Since there is no reason to backup everything again, only things which have been added or changed need to be "incrementally" added to your existing full backup.

If the worst happens you can restore your hard drive from your backup in twenty minutes or less. Once you've done that and reboot, it will be like the problem never even happened.

Acronis also comes with lots of other easy-to-us features, like Acronis Disk Utilities. With Acronis disk utilities you will be able to clone the existing disks and add new hard disks, as well as wipe disks, securely destroy files, and clean up the system.

*Clone Disk
Use Clone Disk Wizard, if you need to clone your hard disk drive by copying the partitions to another hard disk. Click the Clone Disk item to invoke the Clone Disk Wizard.

*Add New Disk
Add New Disk Wizard helps you to add a new hard disk drive to your computer. You will be able to prepare the new hard disk drive to use by creating and formatting new partitions on this hard disk. Click the Add New Disk item to invoke the Add New Disk Wizard.

*Acronis DriveCleanser
Acronis DriveCleanser provides secure data destruction on your hard disk. Click the Acronis DriveCleanser item to launch the Acronis DriveCleanser utility.

*File Shredder
With the File Shredder you can quickly select unnecessary files and folders and destroy them permanently. Click the File Shredder item to launch the File Shredder.

*System Clean-up
With the System Clean-up utility, you can clean up components (folders, files, registry sections, etc.), related to general system tasks. These Windows components retain evidence of user PC activity, so they too should be thoroughly wiped to maintain confidentiality. Click the System Clean-up item to launch the System Clean-up.

Acronis True Image Home 2009 works on Windows XP and Windows Vista 32 and 64-bit systems.

Acronis offers a free, fully-functional 15-day trial. It's a great way for you to find out if Acronis meets your needs. You can download Acronis True Image Home 2009 by clicking this link.

If you'd like more information about Acronis True Image Home 2009, visit this page.

If you're using an older version of Acronis, you can get a special discount on the upgrade to Acronis True Image Home 2009 by clicking this link.