Backup or Image? Either way, save your data …

“You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” I remember that Fram oil filter commercial from long ago. Basically, get prepared and be proactive or you’ll have a lot bigger problem on your hands.

The same thing applies to your data. Whatever’s on your hard drives, you don’t want to lose it.

There are two ways to look at it, and perhaps the way you keep copies of your data depends on what you want to save.

I hesitate use the term “back-up” your data, since this sort of implies the use of backup software. But there’s also a different type of backup, one I prefer, which allows you to restore your hard disk to a bootable condition … imaging.

So what’s the difference? Backup software requires you to reinstall the operating system, and at the very least, reinstall the backup software that you use. There are many different vendors of backup software. Some examples (note the word some) are Dantz Retrospect, Genie Backup Manager and Nero BackItUp which comes with the Nero Suite of CD/DVD burning software. Suffice it to say that they all basically do the same thing … they allow you to select files / folders or even drives that you want to backup, and make a compressed and perhaps encrypted and password-protected datastore of them. If your hard drive crashes, you reinstall the OS, reinstall the backup software, point to the datastore and restore the files.

The datastore can be on an external hard drive, a DVD or even a CD … it can even be on the same hard drive, though of course that makes little sense.

Now, imaging, which I prefer, allows you to make an image of your hard drive, which you can then use to “re-image” your hard drive. The beauty of this is that if your hard drive is unbootable, you can then slap in a new hard drive, take the old image, and restore the hard drive using a bootable CD or floppy, and the image, either on DVD, CD or external HD. The best known examples of imaging software are Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image.

Now, I’ve had a hard drive failure recently, and once I installed a new HD, it took me all of 15 minutes to re-image the drive and get the PC up and running again.

Of course, anything that changed since the last image was made was lost, but that’s not that much compared to having to reinstall ALL the applications and drivers as well as the OS.

You can, with either backup or imaging software, choose to make a full data backup or simply an “incremental” one that records the changes from the last full backup to the current state of your hard drive and files.

So, here’s my suggestion and preference. When you first get your PC, image your hard drive. Image your hard drive, perhaps once a month. Use either a full image or incremental, your choice. Use backup software to backup your important files (in your My Documents folder?), photos and MP3 files.

This way, if your hard drive fails you have an image which will allow you to restore your system to operating status very quickly, as well as backups of your important files.

Oh, and if possible, put your VERY MOST important files on a web-based system … like Yahoo! Briefcase or something. That way, you will have an alternative in case of something REALLY catastrophic.

At any rate … do something. Don’t wait until an emergency hits to realize you need to do this.