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TimesOnline

March 03, 2009

Full text of original article at TimesOnline web site


Don't panic.

I use Acronis True Image Home which ensures I can reboot my PC even I f Windows become corrupted.


Q I back up my files once a week on an external hard drive using the tool built into Windows Vista. As there’s no incremental back-up feature available, my drive is filling up with large archive files. What can I do other than erase the older back-ups? TM from Powys.

A Backing up data is crucial and should be done more than once a week. My laptop is set to perform incremental back-ups every night. This means it will save only the changes from that day rather than taking a copy of all the data on my PC as an archive file. Once a week, it will also do a full back-up.

It’s worth investing in a decent program for this job rather than relying on the Windows one — many external hard drives come bundled with this type of software. I use Acronis True Image Home (£35 from http://acronis.co.uk/ ), which ensures I can reboot my PC even if Windows becomes corrupted, or reinstall it on a new disk if the drive fails.

Many people opt to keep a back-up file offsite, be this via an online service or by storing DVDs at another address. Either way, it’s wise to get all this sorted out before such an event.


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