Data Backup Data Backup Introduction Imagine it. All the pictures you can’t  replace. All the links to websites that you  had in your browser. Programs you’ve spent  good money on and have now lost the serial  numbers for. Important emails, and the  addresses of all the friends and colleagues  that are now gone forever. Well, you get the  picture. What to do?  What you need Well, the solution is actually quite simple.  You just need 2 things: top quality backup  software, and somewhere to backup all your  stuff to.  For the backup software, there’s really no  contest for the home and small office user.  You need Acronis True Image. We provide a  link to it here. We use it, and think it’s the  best there is. So does everyone else. The other thing you need is a separate  external hard drive. So first, here’s the links.  The External Drive It should be a simple matter to install the  external drive. Usually, it’s just a matter of  plugging in the mains and then the USB  cable.  Note: We don’t want to install the software  that comes with the drive, so don’t let it. We  are going to use the Acronis software  instead.  Once you have the drive installed, you’ll  want to partition it. Ideally you should set  the size of the individual partitions to match  the size of the drives they are backing up. A  desktop internal drive these days tends to  be from 500GB upwards, and the drives   even in laptops these days tend to be from  350GB at the cheap end to 500GB and up at  the more expensive end. How Big? Ideally, your system drive should be  partitioned into at least 2, and preferably 3,  partitions. There should be a partition of a  generous 100GB for Windows and nothing  else. Next, you’ll want a partition of around  200GB or so to install the programs you are  using. Finally, divide the remaining space  into a couple of partitions of roughly equal  size to hold the data that you actually  generate. If you then mirror this on your  backup drive, it simplifies the backups no  end. Don’t worry about the actual partition  sizes, or whether a partition is logical or not.  You can change any of this at any time with  the Acronis software.  Software Next you need to install the Acronis  software. As the first task, it will get you to set up a  rescue disk, so that if your computer hard  drive dies, you can put in a new one, start  Acronis from the rescue disk, and copy  everything to the new drive. DO NOT SKIP  THIS!  It will ask you questions about which drives  you want to backup, and where you intend to  back them up to. The documentation is good,  so if you follow it you can’t go wrong. In fact,  you set up everything first, so you can see  what the results of your actions would be,  and only then do you commit and the  software actually starts to do the backup.  The final thing to do is to set up a backup  schedule. This is important since it is the  thing that will take the hard work out of  doing the backups.  Now What? The first backup you should do is a complete  backup of your drive. This will then mean you  have a file with a name you give it on the  external drive. In future, you do backups to  that file, and Acronis will do incremental  backups to that file. That is,it will only  backup the things that have changed, and  add them to the file, on the schedule you  specify. We recommend every day as the  time interval. Just make sure the computer is  on, and Acronis will take care of the rest.  Backing up your data is one of those things that is very boring, but necessary. As we said on the front page, it’s one of those things that you will only realise the value of when something happens to your system and you’ve lost everything! HCR Online Backup There is an alternative to doing the backup in the manner described above. Another way you can do it is to backup online. If you have a reasonable internet connection then this can be a good way to go.  As you can see from the banner, you can protect all your important files by storing them on Elephant Drive’s systems. You wouldn’t want to have a copy of your entire hard drive with this system, since it would take forever to do! But you can protect your most important files using this system. One advantage is that you can then access them from anywhere in the world you happen to be. And so can people selected by you. You can select from Home or Business accounts.  Home accounts can provide up to 500GB of storage! You can cover from 1 to 5 computers, all for one low monthly fee. You have complete peace of mind. Just click the banner to get your FREE TRIAL, and see how easy it all can be. 07838 23 63 25 Click here to email us