NWI Tech Support

 Print This Post

Requirements:

• Any secondary drive (internal, external, networked)  preferably of the same size as your primary or greater (I would recommend an external USB drive of any sort)
• Macrium Reflect Free Edition
• One blank CD-R (to build the Linux Rescue disk)

Drive failures, infections, buddies who think they’re IT technicians… these are the leading causes of data loss.

All, with the exception of drive failure (weighing on the severity), are typically recoverable, at least to some degree. But long before any of this occurs you should implement some safety measures by backing up your system. You can generally find excellent USB drive deals querying google with something like “external usb deals”. If you already have a secondary drive of some sort we’re ready to move on, if not, a purchase (plan on spending around $75.00 for 500GB) would be a worth while investment.

While ntbackup is a great application, I personally prefer imaging solutions over conventional backup methods for their all around superiority. An image, in essence, is a snapshot of your machine from the moment the backup was taken. This backup can then be restored at any point, typically in under an hour. Imaging software generally provides an option to view and restore single files, which makes for an excellent archive.

For this we’ll use Macrium Reflect Free Version found at the link above. This software lives up to it’s claim, “The fastest disk imaging software…”, and has proven itself one of the best backup solutions in my opinion. The Full Edition provides a list of additional features, including support for Windows Server 2003 (details are at the bottom of the page from the link above).  Download your copy, install, register (automatic on the first run), and follow the prompts to begin your image backup. Note – I recommend building a Linux rescue disk when prompted as you’ll need it just in case your system refuses to boot for you.

A restore can be performed through the application interface within Windows or via the Linux Rescue CD by following the prompts as the procedure is laid out very well.