For many, one of the most annoying things in owning a computer is its maintenance. It is ok at the beginning; the computer is brand new and responds to your every command in very efficient manner. But as time moves on, you start to notice the system slowing down, choking and sometimes, even hanging. Then you realize that it is time for a little maintenance. At this time, you would require a backup of all your data and programs, so that after the repair, you can restore the data after the process. Much software for taking backups is available, and in the next section, we are trying to sort out best five among them.
EASEUS Todo Backup
Backing up sensitive data is on one hand, one of the most important things that should be kept in mind while using a computer. This is called overshooting the problem. If you have a backup, in case of a critical system failure, you don’t need to worry. So selecting software for creating backups also needs to be wise. We would like to suggest the Easeus Todo free software for backup. The interface is so easy and manageable; it can be used with ease even by beginners. If something goes wrong, you can still get your data back.
DriveImage XML (Windows)
DriveImage XML introduces into the backup niche a new feature. Clone technique. It mainly works by creating images, which consists of the logical drives, then proceed with the partitioning process and back these up to other hard disk.
This clone technique lets the computer be used in parallel to the backup process. That means, you can carry on your work with the backup running parallel. DriveImage XML can also restore images without the need of a reboot.
CloneZilla (cross platform)
While considering soft wares for backup process, you may have come across the popular, but proprietary package named Norton Ghost. While many prefer to use Ghost, one problem associated with it is- it would take huge amounts of delay to get the backups done. Another Proprietary software, The Symantec Ghost with multicasting Corporate Edition was introduced to cope with the timing problem. But it is good news that there exists a clone system with open source solution named as Clonezilla, incorporating multicasting and unicasting.
Clonezilla is DRBL based. The Partclone, udpcast lets the user to create metal backups and recovery. The clonezilla is of two types.
Clonezilla Live, which is mainly used for individual system backup and recovery. The second type, Clonezilla SE, or Server Edition, is used to backup server systems. At NCHC’s Classroom, this server edition was put into use to clone forty-one computers all at the same time. It takes only a surprising ten minutes for perfectly cloning one 5.6 GB system image into the 41 systems, by multicasting.
Again, clonezilla stands out from the crowd because of one of its brilliant mechanisms. It clones only the used blocks and not the entire blocks, thereby saving much time and backup space requirement.
XXCLONE (Windows)
XXCLONE provides ways to clone the entire OS. It creates a System disk of windows, which is also bootable one. XXCLONE supports Windows NT4m Windows XP and Window Server 2003. XXCLONE has wrapped in it features that enables it to participate in the race along other proprietary giants such as Ghost from Norton, Drive Image and Maxblast. This works much swifter than many typical other daily Backup alternatives. It has also got great feedbacks from professionals.
EASEUS Disk Copy (cross platform)
EaseUS has been providing leading services in the field of memory management/ data backup solutions. They have been providing the services for thousands of business owners in over180 different countries. This has put EaseUS services a pioneer in its field. Unlike coolzilla, which we locally installed, EaseUS burns an ISO image into a boot CD/DVD.
The cloning process is independent of the partition scheme or file system.
Now that we have listed the useful data backup tools, we would like to hear from you. If you have any other tool to suggest, share with us the same. We would love to get a little feedback.