These days, the question is not whether or when to back up your data. It’s how best to do it. The number of options for safeguarding your data via backups is daunting — and that’s the trouble. Just look at the backup utility market today, and you’ll see programs that perform full system backups, image backups, individual document backups, and application-specific backups. Which type is best for you? To answer that question, you need to know the pros and cons of each backup type. Read on to find out.
Non-Proprietary Backups
Most backup programs available today will stuff your data into a proprietary backup format, requiring you to have and use the same program to restore your data that you used to back it up. That, of course, is not always convenient, and it constitutes another step in a data restoration procedure that you’ll have to remember in order to be able to successfully retrieve your data.
That’s why, for many, there’s real value in a program that simply creates a duplicate copy of your files on another drive. With such a backup, you can simply access the duplicate copies with Windows Explorer or another file manager and restore them as easily as you can copy files.
There are a few routes that you can take to get duplicate copies of your files made. One, of course, is just to manually copy your most valuable files using a file manager. That approach, while free, only works if you remember to perform the task regularly. A better option for most is to use a backup program such as Second Copy (http://www.centered.com) that automatically backs up your data in a non-proprietary format. Second Copy gives you all the convenience of a backup program — with features such as scheduling and automation — but won’t make you…