For most people, saving is something both tedious and boring: difficult to choose, long to set up, it usually works in the background and provides no tangible benefit … until a hard drive fails, when suddenly arise a series of questions: and what do I do now? Where did I put away my last backup? And when was she, in fact? To avoid panic, you better have a backup plan. Until recently, we tested a storage solution that is (finally) of the complete system backup and data a cakewalk. Today, we look at some additional options and compared Rebit, Acronis True Image and integrated backup feature in Windows 7, all with a portable hard drive Hitachi.
Backup: the options
For backup, the first question that usually arises is the “target”, that is to say, the media used. Although the term “backup” is still, to some extent, associated with bands and complications they cause, it is possible to use any storage media. Tape drives were the most common materials in the 80s and 90s and are still used today, but mainly business. The public generally prefers optical disks, hard drives and network drives because of the significant drop in the cost per gigabyte experienced by these solutions in recent years.
In principle, we agree that at the dawn of 2010, tape backup is probably the worst choice for individuals, in so far as it requires proprietary hardware and appropriate software, which means that we must first restore a functional system before you can access its data. Optical discs (DVDs and recordable Blu-ray, in particular), for their part, are relatively suitable media for backup: write speeds are sufficient, their price ranges from low to DVD acceptable for BD-R and versioning is automatic insofar as the write-once discs can not be changed once closed.
USB hard drives: the winning solution
However, these are the hard drives that have the favor of the public, due to their ease of use and price become almost ridiculous, not to mention the fact that, since all “talk” USB computers (they operate under Windows, OS X, Linux or other), a portable hard drive connected via USB 2.0 is probably what is more flexible and more universal in terms of media storage / backup.
A warning though: keep in mind that hard disks sometimes fail. It is therefore imperative to perform its backups on multiple disks to increase the storage devices. Now that we have clarified this point (essential), we can look with confidence some of the options that we believe are the most appropriate backup solutions to individuals today. We took a solid portable hard drive and good quality, the Rugged Portable 500GB Hitachi, and decided to compare three backup software Acronis True Image (which offers a particularly wide operating range of imaging the total management system), Rebit backup and backup integrated with Windows 7. this has changed significantly compared to previous versions and, contrary to what one might think, is a viable option for many users . These three programs have one thing in common: they all can use any medium as a target, including our mobile hard disk Hitachi.