Make an Image for Easy Backup
Last Updated on Thursday, 10 December 2009 06:11 Written by Alan Thursday, 10 December 2009 06:11
Wouldn’t it be nice if, when you replaced a hard drive, you could blast your whole system – operating system, apps, settings, etc. – onto that new drive and be back up and running as if nothing happened in an hour or so? This could even include your documents, music and pictures if they haven’t changed since you took the image. However, since imaging a drive is a fairly slow process I recommend doing it sparingly and keeping a separate backup of docs, pictures and music.
Ideally, once you have your PC set up the way you want it, with all of your settings configured to your taste and all of your favorite apps installed, that is the time to take an image. As time goes by and you find more can’t-do-without apps you may want to replace the old image with a new one. But, beware, all of the apps you install, don’t like, and uninstall leave traces behind. These traces, over time, slow down your PC. So this later image may not be the best idea. Personally, I just take an image once, after everything I KNOW I want is installed. If some great app comes along later, well, I can live with having to download and install it again the old fashioned way.
There are many programs available for imaging a drive – Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image are 2 excellent commercial programs. There are also free options – Clonezilla is probably my favorite.
But, if you are using Windows 7, then you have a free imaging program built-in and, since (hopefully) nobody knows the Windows OS like Microsoft, it works very well.
Before we get started, let me state the obvious – you must save the image to a separate drive. An image will not help when it is on the drive that crashed…
1. First, click Start and choose Control Panel. From within Control Panel click System and Security and then Back up your computer.
2. Now, from the left column click on Create a system image.
3. You will now be given 3 choices of locations to store your image. The first is an external drive (if you have one attached the PC). The second is to a blank DVD in your computers DVD drive. And the third (the one I chose) is to another PC on your network. If you choose this last option you will be prompted to give the user name and password for that PC. You will also receive a message under it telling you it can’t be secured across a network. This is only really an issue on a network outside of your home so there’s really no need to worry.
4. Now once you click Next you can go take a nap, do some shopping or whatever activity you wish – this can take a while! But, you can rest easy knowing you have to less to fear from that inevitable hard drive failure that happens to all of us.
