Backing Up your PC
Backing up your PC is a lot more than simply backing up your data, it’s also about backing up your whole operating system. This is called creating an image of your PC and storing it on an external hard drive.
If you do this, you can quickly recover your PC if it should crash or become severely infected by a virus or other malware.
Disk imaging software is available either as free software or in commercial versions that usually have a few extra features. For the best free program see Macrium Reflect here and for the best commercial program see Acronis True Image here.
There is also a free version of Acronis True Image here. It doesn’t have all of the features of the commercial version but it can create backup images and restore them easily.
For step-by-step instructions see the article here and see videos here.
The general steps for creating a backup image of your PC are as follows:
- Purchase an external hard drive if you do not currently own one. These can be purchased for as little as $69 to $89.>
- Open My Computer and right-click your C drive and make sure you rename it to C_Drive so you can recognize it later
- Create a new folder on the external hard drive names Images or use any name that you wish
- Create a sub-folder under the Images folder and give it a name with the date of the backup in it such as 12_10_2013
- Next, decide on the software that you are going to use, download and install it. The only reason to install it is to create the recovery media which is the next step
- Create bootable rescue media. Most programs have an option Tools for creating rescue media. This can be a CD or USB drive. You need a blank CD or a USB drive that will be formatted and have all of its data deleted so be sure to back it up first.
- Learn how to boot your PC from a CD or Flash drive. You may see a quick message on your screen when booting to a certain key for boot options. It differs from one PC to another. Click here for a list of keystroke versus manufacturer for entering the BIOS. It may not list your PC but it’s a start.
- Now you are ready to create an image. Boot from the rescue media that you created in Step 6. You will have an option to Backup or Restore. Choose Backup, select your C_Drive, pick a destination which is the folder you created in Step 3.
- After this you should just follow the prompts.
Next time you do this you will only have to perform steps 3, 4, 8 and 9.
Acronis has a user guide here and for Macrium Reflect, go to YouTube and search using Macrium Reflect. See a typical tutorial here.
Should your PC ever fail to boot or get severely infected just boot from the Rescue media and choose Restore and use the image that you stored on your external hard drive.
For extensive reading on backing up see the article here. This is a 22 page PDF