• Acronis Resource Center
• Tips & Tricks
• Acronis Solutions
• Case Studies
• Tech Talk
• Whitepapers
• Links
• Submit Feedback

Newsletter

My Computer Just Crashed. Help!

Batten down the hatches by cloning, setting and backing up.

While occasional crashes are a fact of computer life, a computer that has crashed once is much more likely to do it again. You need to take steps to protect yourself in the event of a crash, which could come at any minute. Make sure your data and configuration information, such as registry settings, are safeguarded.

The first step is to create an image of your hard disk using a product like Acronis True Image. This provides fast protection, especially from problems with your hard disk. It is also much faster to restore from a disk image than to restore from a tape or to rebuild the system from scratch. If you have more than one disk drive in your system you can save one on the second drive, but remember, this isn't complete protection so you can't stop there.

If you don't have any external disk drive, a CD writer, or any other external storage device you can save an image to a hidden partition on your hard disk. This will ensure that the image is secure in case of an operating system failure or corrupted file, the most common types of system failures.

The next step is to set a set a System Restore point using Windows System Restore service. This takes a snapshot of the current state of your computer to make it easier to bring everything back in the event you have worse problems. (See What Is System Restore And How Do I Use It? to learn how to use the service.)

Finally, as soon as you finish these two steps you need to back up all your important data and configuration information to a secure, off-line medium. The best idea is to save the image on a removable drive, such as a USB, FireWire hard disk, optical media writer (CD or DVD), or save the images across a network to another system. External storage is relatively inexpensive these days and the best protection is to have an image that's physically separate from your working system.

Don't forget to schedule your backups, preferably doing a full backup at least weekly and incremental backups daily. This is a good strategy to use, even if you aren't having system problems.