From musical scores and family photos to important documents and system files, a hard drive crash can be a material and emotional nightmare. However, you can easily create an exact copy (backup) of your hard drive to protect information from computer viruses or hardware failures.
Steps
Step 1. Determine the location of the backup
on the same hard drive or on a different (external) hard drive.
Step 2. Download or purchase the required software
There are many inexpensive programs that provide reliable backup and disaster recovery for your system, applications, settings, and personal files.
Step 3. If you want to save a backup copy on your hard disk, you need to partition it
Right-click on the Computer icon (on the desktop) and select Manage.
Step 4. In the left pane, click "Disk Management"
All discs are displayed. To create partitions, click on the appropriate drive and follow the instructions on the screen.
Step 5. After creating the partition, format it (when partitioning a disk using the Disk Management utility, you can format the created partition automatically or not)
Step 6. Run the backup program
Such programs provide a user-friendly user interface that guides you through the entire process.
Step 7. Select the disk you want to copy
In most cases, this is drive C:
Step 8. Select the drive where the backup will be stored
Specify either the partition you created on your hard drive or an external drive.
Step 9. Click the "Start" button to start the backup process
Depending on the size of your data and the speed at which it is written to your hard drive, this process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
Step 10. Test the integrity of the backup
If you have made an exact copy of the entire disk, remove the old disk to verify its integrity. Your computer should boot successfully from the new disk.
Advice
- Select a backup program that supports incremental backups. This will allow you to restore the system, files and folders to any point in time.
- There are some good disk backup software like Acronis, Paragon, and Norton. Read reviews of these programs on the Internet and choose the one that best suits your needs.
- Some companies offer to store backups on secure FTP servers. If you have a lot of important files or are considering the possibility of theft or loss of your backup disk, consider a remote server when purchasing backup software.
- When restoring an exact copy of a disk, you must select a disk with the same or larger capacity as your hard disk. If your files take up a lot of space, it's better to use an external hard drive (USB or Firewire) to store a copy, rather than a separate partition on your hard drive.