I recently went through the pain of a hard drive failure on my laptop. Fortunately, I had been taking a weekly backup to an external hard drive, using the built-in Windows 7 utility. Without really thinking about what I was requesting, I had also selected the option to include a system image each week which, in the end, saved me hours of work. A system (or Windows) image backup is a complete backup of your system, applications, data, drivers, everything! Having a backup of this type is so useful, I would recommend it to everyone.
One thing I hadn't done though was to create a recovery disk. I had always meant to but Windows required a recordable DVD (not a rewritable, some of which I did have) and I just kept forgetting to buy some. (You really never think the worst is going to happen do you? And, to be fair, in 25 years of using personal computers, this is the first time I have suffered a hard drive failure.) Having a recovery disk allows the quick restoration of the Windows installation, drivers etc. and also provides the launch point for restoring the complete system image. In my case, the guy who put in the new hard drive was able to install the same version of Windows, from which I was able to create a recovery disk.
Although Windows 7 backup did save the day for me, it's not the most versatile backup software I've used. It seems it's only possible to have one schedule and adding a system image to the selected folder backup means extra time and space are required. In fact, my old Freecom 400gb external hard drive was fast running out of space, requiring more and more deletion of old backups.
I am now looking for third-party backup software and have found there are a number of free, feature rich products available. I am currently assessing them and will report back when I have found one I like. I have also invested in a 2-terabyte external hard drive, which should provide enough space, even if I end up sticking with the Windows 7 utility. The drive I've gone for is this one:
It's very quiet, simple to install (just plug it in to a spare USB port) and has an amazing amount of space.
The backup strategy I'm hoping to implement will include
A recovery DVD (vital)
A weekly system image backup to the external hard drive
Seperate backups of my important data folders, including a 4-weekly full and daily differential backups.
I did lose about a week's work when my hard drive failed, as I was only doing a weekly backup and, of course, the drive failed the day before the scheduled backup day. The above strategy should allow me to limit any future loss to 1 day. I may even decrease the differential interval to a few hours. To paraphrase the song - "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"!
