If you follow my personal blog or know me outside of Gears and Widgets, you’ll know that I just finished building a new rig! It’s a beautiful Core i7-based computer with top of the line components, so I like to think I’ll be set for a good while – but now that I have the computer all set up the way I like with all of my favorite apps up and configured and running, what do I do to make sure that I don’t have to go through the hassle of setting it all up all over again if I get a new hard drive or something happens to the one in my new computer?
That’s right – image that drive! Take an image and store it on a backup disc; maybe an external hard drive, something, but making that first critical backup can save you hours of having to install drivers, apps, and tweaking to get your system right back to where it was when you had that terrible crash or you bought that new drive.
The blog MakeUseOf has a great tutorial that outlines five different ways to clone and back up your hard drive; whether you’re moving from one drive to a bigger one or you’re just trying to take regular backups of your system, there are great ways to make sure you can easily and quickly take images and make clones of your hard drive for safe keeping. Some apps like Clonezilla and DriveImage XML that I’m familiar with are highlighted in the article, but some other winners I’m not familiar with like EASEUS and Paragon are highlighted as well.
By chance, my backup drive is a Seagate drive, and it turns out that they OEM Acronis True Image. I’ve used it (including restoring a file from backup), and it’s worked so far.