Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org.
QUESTION: We just purchased a new PC and there is a menu option for creating backup disks. The process requires several DVDs and seems to take forever. Is there a better way to do this?
PC CLUB: First, a little background. PC manufactures differ in their approach to allowing you to make backup disks for your PC. Some manufactures provide a Recovery Disc, some store the Recovery Files on a separate partition of the hard drive and others have you create your own. I have found this latter method to be tedious and somewhat unreliable. You can certainly do this and spend a considerable time or use simpler method. The method that I use requires two items, a software program and an external hard drive. Here’s a description of the process:
1. Select the program that you plan to use – more below on this
2. Use the software to create a bootable CD
3. Connect an external hard drive to the PC
4. Create a folder on the external hard drive to contain the backup of the PC you’re about to create
5. Boot from the CD and follow the instructions to create a backup image.
Some PCs will detect a bootable CD and boot from it automatically. Others may require you to press a special key on the keyboard, most commonly the F12 key. Lastly, you may have to configure the PC’s BIOS to boot from a CD. You can read the instructions at http://bit.ly/changebios.
When you back up your PC using this method it is called making an image of your hard drive. There are several programs for doing this and my favorite one is Shadow Protect available for $89 at www.storagecraft.com. There are several free programs available including Paragon Backup and Recovery available at http://bit.ly/paragonbackup and Macrium Reflect available at http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp.
This process should take less than 20 minutes. Once you have backed up your PC, place the backup in a safe place. Should you need to restore your PC in the future, just boot from the same CD and choose the Restore option. Since backing up your PC is so vital, I recommend Shadow Protect since there is technical support available atand lots of information on their web site.
To really be safe, you should backup your PC every six months since backups become obsolete every time you make changes to your PC. Also, backup your data frequently.
Ed Schwartz is a member of the North Orange County Computer Club. To send in a question, go to edwardns.com and click the Contact Me menu. Archives of previous columns are also on the website.