Koka Sexton dot Com

Backup for the rest of us

We all know we need to backup our data. Most people tend to manually copy their important pictures, documents and other information to a flash drive or an external hard-drive. For most people that is enough to give the belief of a level of security. But how often do you really do this? Chances are you are only backing up your information when you think of it (hardly ever) or when you already notice your computer is having problems. So the fact is that you are rolling dice in a virtual craps game and it’s just a matter of time before you roll a seven. Then you’re done.

You may have most of your information but you can’t get to it until you fix any hardware issues and reinstall the OS.

Acronis saves lives

Between the 3 machines I have at home and the multiple external drives I have for data storage, I can’t begin to put a value on everything. Sure the computers are easy to replace. Finding a deal at Tiger Direct or any number of online stores wouldn’t take too much time to find an affordable replacement. The real cost would be in losing my data. Losing my music, video and pictures alone would probably cripple me, adding the loss of my web development files, documents and other misc. files, I would be brought to tears. It happened once a few years back, and I’m not ashamed to say I cried. That’s why I invested in external drives and looking at software to automate the process.

When my computer took another dump due to a ‘catastrophic failure’ I thought all was lost. I was able to restore my machine from an image within 20 minutes and everything was back to normal and I was ready to roll. Life saved. In the case of a machine having to deal with the failure below, my image still would have worked on a new computer.

How I use Acronis.

Getting a backup software that you can schedule makes the entire process easy and mindless. Imaging is far better than file based backups for a quick restore. This is why most computers come with a factory CD that you can boot from and restore a computer back to the factory settings. The problem with factory settings is that you have to deal with all the garbage files that came on you computer to begin with and uninstall them one by one.

After getting a new computer, before I install anything (even Firefox) I spend time removing all the useless software that gets bundled in. It takes up space and memory resources that I would rather use elsewhere. After that is done, the first thing I do is install my backup software, in this case I use Acronis. Once the software is installed I take a full image of my machine and that is my NEW factory image. Then I’ll go through the process of install the software I use most often. Firefox for a browser, Trillian for IM, Microsoft Office, Webroot and other stuff. Then I take another image and call that my ideal machine.

My ideal machine is the image I will use 99.999% of the time when I restore. The only reason I keep the new factory image on hand is if I really want to blow out the machine and start from scratch, or if I am getting rid of the machine by selling it.

Using the scheduler, I automate the process to do a backup every couple of days in the middle of the night and put the image on an external drive which is then scheduled to move the same image to another drive. Redundancy is the key!

I think Acronis True Image rocks. That’s why I work with them building a reseller channel. It’s not hard to explain what sets the application apart from others out there. There are many players in the Backup/Disaster Recovery arena and they all have their pros and cons. After working with a few different companies that do this, I have never seen a software do a restore of an image easier than Acronis. Don’t take my word for it, go to the website and get a copy for your home computer to see the magic for yourself.

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