One of the most troubling types of computer problems involves the loss of data
Personal files, photos, important documents, music, videos, and the like are all
things that can be disturbing to lose. And yet many people have no
plans to protect these important, irreplaceable files from loss. But
there are plenty of things that can go wrong that affect these files.
Hard drive failures:
Mechanical hard drives are an amazingly complex piece of machinery,
capable of storing large amounts of data in a small physical space, and
at a relatively low cost. Not surprisingly, the mechanics inside a
mechanical hard drive can fail, plus they are sensitive to shock (being
dropped, bumped, etc.), so they are not invulnerable.
Flash memory failure:
SD cards, USB drives and internal memory for tablets and phones use a
non-volatile memory (meaning that the memory does not require electrical
energy to store data). This type of memory is pretty reliable, (not
shock-sensitive) but still failures can happen, and they can fail without warning.
Virus
or Ransomware: This type of threat can corrupt files, or encrypt them
to prevent access to the files at all. Payment can be demanded to
release the files, with an implied threat to delete the files if payment
is not made.
What do all of these have in common? If you have a backup which contains your backup files, then you will be able to recover your system and your files.
Windows 7 and above include a backup utility for creating and maintaining backup copies of your files and can also backup your operating system (OS) in case of a virus or hardware failure. You can access it by typing backup in your search bar. Using it, you can select which files you want to back up (often called the source data) , where you want to store them (the target) and when you want to perform the backup (and if it is to repeat). If you run it immediately, it will take minutes or hours depending on how many files, the relative speed of the computer, and the type of backup storage.There are also many programs that will perform backups for you; naturally, they feature some additional options not found in the Windows backup utility. I am currently using one called AOMEI Backupper, which has can do partition resizing, disk cloning and disk imaging as well.
I have been using disk cloning software* for several years. It has proven as easy way to prevent redundant activities when prepping and repairing computer systems. I really appreciate the ease with which this type of software can give a layer of protection to a user. In fact, I recently did a full backup of my primary system last week, a process that took (in its entirety) about 4 hours. This was a backup of over 300GB of data files, pictures, music etc., and I fully verified that the backup will boot into windows. Disk imaging software** takes a slightly different approach, where the target of the imaging is a larger storage device that can hold many images. Usually a server (a network computer with vast amounts of storage) will be utilized in this environment, and usually in an enterprise operation.
* Disk cloning software-a utility program which makes an exact copy of the drive, essentially duplicating the source drive sector by sector.
**Disk imaging software- a utility program that can store an image, or a full copy of a disk or partition, for later use during a recovery operation.
