“Oh no! Computer, why are you just sitting there with a blinking cursor on the screen? I NEED YOU! My photos, my music, my level 66 WoW saved game, I’ll just die!”
Have you ever had your computer fail on you? Chances are, you were just thinking about backing up your computer last week and never got around to it. Everyone should back up their important information and get it off the physical computer to a storage medium, or even another computer. Unfortunately, this only becomes clear after it was gone. For users who have thousands of files on their computers and can not just do a “Copy/Paste” backup to a blank CD or Flash Drive, backup software can really make backing up simple. Unfortunately, there are not many free backup programs to choose from, fortunately there is at least one: Macrium Reflect.
Macrium Reflect creates full drive images using the Windows Volume Shadow Copy service. Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions are available. Backup destinations can be on another partition, external drive, network, or CD/DVD Burner. These are all things that the free version allows you to do.
Macrium Reflect brags being the only free disk imaging software for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
What is disk imaging, you ask? Instead of copying individual files as they are, disk imaging involves making a copy of the entire hard drive (or the partition). The disadvantage is that you can not backup just certain folders, the advantage is that you can quickly restore your computer to the exact condition it was in when you made the backup — it creates an exact duplicate. The term imaging literally means to reflect, or to be a look-alike with no differences.
The professional version of Macrium offers:
The free version of this program does everything anyone could really want disk imaging software to do. Disk imaging is, by far, one of the best ways to make backups of your computer — providing you have an external storage device to put it on.
The pay-for stuff:
“But I prefer paid software!” Or, quite often, software with more features. A program a friend of mine recommended Acronis True Image, which also provides disk imaging for a backup solution (including incremental backup), individual file backup, and encryption. Acronis True Image has a free trial so you can see how you like it before you buy it. The typical price for this program is around $49.99, with a “Back to School” sale (this posted July 2010) for $29.99.
