Gain Peace of Mind When Backing Up Precious Data

Computers are a focal point in corporations, businesses and especially in our homes today. All of our most precious and important information is stored in these machines. Sometimes it's hard to imagine life without computers. Sometimes even we are forced to face life without our computer because as we know disaster strikes and any given moment, usually without any warning.

In the event of such a disaster we are forced to cope with misfortune. It's hard to imagine, until it happens and then we are pinned to the wall. With nowhere to turn we scramble to pick up the pieces and put the information back together. But with the source destroyed, zapped, stolen, burned, whatever the case may be, what are we to do?

Where is this peace of mind?
Peace of mind is gained through simple form of a lifesaving habit. A habit that once implemented can save loads of time and money whether you run a business or just keep track of allowances and pay bills on your beloved computer. The habit that must be formed is one of continually backing up your systems information.

When performing a system backup you initially save everything you have up to the point and time you decide to backup. Hopefully it becomes a daily/weekly habit, as the information we store and rely on is priceless. In the event an accident happens and you experience complete data loss; these backup points you made can be easily restored to. Think of backing up as taking a picture of your complete system and configurations at any given time, and using that as a restore point.

There are basically three different types of backups. There is the full backup, the incremental, and the differential backup methods. Understanding each one is important to making sure you're appropriately backed up. And at the same time not eating up disk space at an excessive rate. Hard drives are typically becoming larger and larger and we are filling the up just the same; trying to frequently run full backups on a 320gb hard drive will tend to burn huge amounts of memory and can easily be avoided.

A full backup is a backup of everything. A full backup of drive C: for example would be a backup of all the files, folders and contents of the C: drive. A full backup of your system would include all of the drives connected to your system. A full backup stands alone and it's basically a snapshot of your entire machine at any given point in time. You can restore the entire machine to the exact state it was in at the time that the snapshot was taken, or just certain files if need be.

An incremental backup on the other hand includes only those things that have changed since the previous backup and saves those things into an auxiliary backup file. The first incremental backup is a full backup; it has to have an initial full backup to start from and compare to. The second incremental backup backs up only those files that have changed since the previous backup was taken. Basically building upon each backup, making it quick and easy to keep up on current files.

Lastly there is the differential backup method. This method is a sort of hybrid, building further upon full and incremental. Technically they are just incremental backups with a fixed starting point. Not only the changes from the previous day, each differential backup includes all the changes from the initial full backup.

Incremental backups are probably the easiest way to backup from day to day ensuring that you have a place to return to in the even of an unfortunate information meltdown. Forming a strong backup habit can be the only peace of mind attainable in our busy lives.

Gabe Redfield is an idealist constantly pursuing happiness, success and wealth. Believing that harmony of habit permeates to harmony of lifestyle.

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