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Backup
- How to Avoid a Disaster
Creating
backups of important files on a regular basis is probably one of
the easiest and cheapest ways to protect hours of work and
personal files from all sorts of technical disasters. Still,
billions of dollars are lost every year because of technical
problems and loss of data. WinBackup is a new backup solution
from LI Utilities that makes it easier for home users and small
companies to create secure and well-organized data backups.
Organizing
Backups by Priority
When running backups on a daily basis it is very important that
the backup process does not interfere with the normal tasks
performed on your computer. Running a large harddrive backup of
all files on your pc can take anywhere from a few minutes to
half an hour depending on how fast your computer is and the
number of files that need to be copied. Since a backup operation
will slow down your system considerably while in progress it is
often necessary to split your backups into several backup jobs.
By running more important jobs more often and by backing up
static files less often you can easily reduce interference
caused by backup operations by 90% or more. Not only will
splitting and prioritising backups make your system run much
smoother, but you will also be able to update important backups
of emails and other data much more often.
Scheduling
Backups
In order to keep you pc backups up to date you will probably
want to schedule backups to run automatically. WinBackup uses a
built-in scheduler that makes this task very easy. Since
WinBackup also supports any number of Backup Jobs with separate
scheduling settings you can make more important jobs, like
emails, run more often while large, infrequently updated, files
are backed up only every other week or so. Using WinBackup you
can even combine-scheduled backups with manual backups to ensure
that important changes gets backed up immediately. Since you use
the same Backup Jobs for scheduled and manual file backups,
running a manual file backup can be done with a single mouse
click.
Compressing
Data Backups
In most cases, compressing backups can be a very good idea since
many files that are commonly included in backups (emails, text
documents or images) can often be compressed to 50% of their
original size or less. If you are using WinBackup, compression
is enabled by default. In WinBackup you can also find out how
large the compressed file will be before running the backup by
looking at the estimated compressed size value. This value is
updated in real-time while you add or remove files to the backup
and can be very helpful when determining if the backup will fit
on the target harddrive or cd.
Secure
Online Backups
After creating a computer backup you will probably store the
backup on a CD, a shared file server or maybe even on the
Internet. In order to protect you files it is often recommended
that you use a password, or if the backup contains sensitive
information, you should use some form of encryption. WinBackup
supports both password protection and strong encryption using
the AES 128 or 256-bit encryption standard. Encrypted backup
files will be nearly impossible to open without the correct
password can safely be stored on CDs and public servers. If you
want to run online backups encryption is often critical to
protect your data from unauthorized accesses.
A
Network Backup System
Corporate users as well as home users with local networks will
often want to backup several computers to a server and then
backup the server to a CD, CDRW or DVD. This can be achieved by
scheduling the workstations to backup their files to the server
first, and then, after waiting for an hour or two, a scheduled
bakup job on the server stores all the workstation backups to a
CD Writer installed in the server. By layering backups this way
you can easily backup entire networks and data can be restored
by workstation users at any time since the backup files for
individual systems remain on the server. This technique can be
very efficient and can save a lot of time for end users as well
as IT departments.
Windows
Backups and File Sharing Problems
If you have ever tried to delete or rename an exe file that
being executed, you probably know that locked files can
sometimes cause serious problems. This is even more true when
creating backups since many of the files that you backup will
probably be locked by other programs when the backup operation
is started. If you, for example, are using outlook when a
scheduled backup operation starts, the whole operation could
fail if the backup software attempts to lock the email database.
WinBackup never tries to lock files and will continue a backup
operation even if a file could not be read. Any missing files
will be added to the log and will be backed up the next time the
backup job is executed. Since WinBackup doesn't lock files it
will not prevent you from using your computer for other tasks
while a backup operation is in progress. This is very important
if you want to run scheduled operations in the background while
you are working.
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