External Hard Drive Backup Software
If your external hard drive does not come with backup software, and these days most have some basic program included, then you would be wise to invest in a standalone version. I can’t stress enough how important it is not just to back up your files, photos, music, etc., but to do so regularly. A friend of mine has just had a hard disk failure on his internal desktop drive. The drive was completely dead and not even recognised in the BIOS. He had been backing up but in a rather haphazard way and also not as regularly as he should have. As a result he was able to recover some very recent files, but others were months old and he has lost a lot of valuable information.
Backup software makes it easy for you to get your digtal life copied safely to another drive. Most employ a drag and drop interface so you don’t have to start the application itself. You can do incremental backups which only copy new or altered files or the cloning of an entire disk which includes your operating system, applications and settings. This saves so much time not having to re-install Windows or OS, and all your other programs over again. With some software you can even save recovery points via FTP to a site. Initial backups of a disk can take a considerable length of time but it is worth doing so as subsequent backups can then be incremental and a lot quicker. You could do this manually but keeping track of what files and folders had been changed since your last backup would be a nightmare to remember. You would more than likely miss something important which really defeats the object of backing up correctly. Most can also be automated so it can be done during the night or at a regular convenient time of your choosing.
One thing I would add is that receovery on a lot of these programs is via the software itself. So if you are backing up to a different partition on the same disk and the partition you are using fails, you won’t be able to recover your files. You should always backup to a separate external hard drive and it is even advisable to manually copy your really important data as well.
Don’t wait, get backed up as soon as possible. A disk corruption or failure can occur at any time with disastrous consequences!
