People who are somehow connected with IT have a sad joke about the fact that users are divided into two types: those who make backups, and those who started them (!). If you have never experienced the complete loss of all your important documents or a collection of media files, then you wonât understand the humor. If you have encountered, but could not prevent, you will also not be laughing.
Is it possible to somehow prevent such an unpleasant incident? Of course! Only at first you need to find out what backup is.
General information
This is the name for backing up important files (including system files). As you can understand, this is done to protect them in the event of a virus infection or a critical hardware failure. Backup can be done both manually and with the help of specialized programs.
In the first case, you can copy important system files to some protected storage, while the utility can even save the whole operating system.
And what is âBackupâ if you translate this name from English? The term comes from the English word backup, which can be translated as "stock". However, with the same success, it can mean something like âbackupâ or âduplicateâ. Thus, this term refers to the storage of important information on a third-party medium.
By the way, our ancestors knew very well what backup is! True, they did not call this process. Do you know that all manuscripts corresponded? The fact is that in ancient times, enemies loved to burn libraries, and therefore, to keep all the books in one place and one copy would be simply stupid. Of course, all kinds of moneylenders also mastered backing up, keeping lists of their debtors in several copies.
When to back up?
Returning to the topic of sayings and proverbs, we should once again recall the uselessness of consuming mineral water at a time when your kidneys are no longer working ... Simply put, you need to save all your working documents constantly! Even if you donât store something incredibly important on your computer, configured and working without glitches, the OS is important information in itself.
Thus, before you decide to try some interesting program, it is advisable to make a backup copy of the system or important files that affect its performance.
It is easy to guess that before completely reinstalling the OS, it is advisable to transfer all your collections of films and music to a spare hard drive. Installation programs today work almost impeccably, but it never hurts to be safe in this matter.
Where can I back up?
There are two main ways to reliably save your data from damage or total loss: on physical media or in the cloud. Consider all the methods in more detail, point out their strengths and weaknesses.
Burn to external drive
Since the capacity of external drives today can exceed several TB, you can easily write to such a disk not only some important files, but even a huge archive with photos and videos. The advantage of this method is not only the huge capacity of the carrier, but also its mobility. The only serious drawback is the ability to lose data due to strong mechanical stress on the disk. To avoid this, purchase more reliable enclosures.
Flash-card
If you want to save only some system files, then a flash drive is quite enough for this purpose. They are cheap, every year their capacity only grows, there are no problems with drivers, and mechanical reliability is at its best. Moreover, even getting into the water most often does not harm those files that are written there.
The disadvantage is that flash drives quite often fail, and there are simply no utilities that could warn about the likelihood of such an event. This is especially true of cheap Chinese models. The write speed is very low, and the data storage time is also limited.
Putting the flash drive in the drawer for six months, you may well find that there is nothing on it. Especially this affects large-capacity drives, where they still have not learned how to effectively deal with charge leakage.
Compact discs
Despite the anachronism of this type of media, in some cases they are simply irreplaceable. Of course, we do not urge you to use 700 MB CD-ROMs, but DVD-9, with a capacity of almost 9 GB, can be a good way out. Keep in mind that recorded discs should be protected from temperature extremes, exposure to sunlight, and mechanical defects.
If we talk about acceptable reliability and capacity, then DVD is the best recommended. CD discs are extremely reliable and durable, but 700 MB is ridiculous by now. Blu-ray discs are very roomy (30 GB or more), but not every computer has drives for writing and reading them. In addition, they are very sensitive to surface damage.
The clouds
This topic has become incredibly popular in recent years. So what is backup in the cloud? This is copying the necessary files to the servers of third-party companies specializing in providing some amount of free space for a fee or for free.
The most famous âcloudsâ are services from Dropbox, Google Drive and Yandex Disc. For example, Google Drive completely free 15 GB of free space, which is enough for most home users.
How to backup Windows?
If you have ever had the dubious fortune of working with Windows 98 / Me, then remember very well their âwiltinessâ. More precisely, the systems were quite good for themselves, but with the slightest inconvenience, in compatibility with some programs and devices, they were able to go into a deep âswoonâ, which had every chance of ending with reinstalling the OS.
Fortunately, Microsoft introduced a built-in backup mechanism in new versions. In Vista / 7/8, he was brought to a pretty decent condition. Consider a backup of Windows 7. Make it simple.
Click on the âStartâ button, find the âControl Panelâ item there. In the dialog box that opens, search for "Backup and Restore." Click on the link with the left mouse button, and in the dialog box that opens, select "Create a system image".
The working window will open again, in which you can immediately choose three options for saving the image: on the hard disk, on a CD / DVD disc, on the network. Check the box next to your preferred item, and then click OK. If the Internet connection is poor, then an attempt to save the image on the network may fail.
Of course, all the same can be done using third-party copy utilities. The most famous are products from Acronis, Norton Ghost. At home, the functionality of specialized programs from the Nero package will also be quite sufficient. Their disadvantage is that all these utilities are paid.
Of course, if you need increased reliability, itâs better to pay. But even standard Windows tools are enough for home users.
Mobile devices
All of the above, to one degree or another, is probably familiar to everyone who has been working on a computer for at least a long time. But what about the owners of today's popular tablets and smartphones?
Indeed, today a lot of extremely important information is stored on these devices, which you do not want to lose at all. Since today the most popular mobile OS is Android, let's talk about gadgets under its control.
So how to backup your android device? We will make a reservation in advance that we will not copy banal photos and videos, but programs and settings. If all this is lost, then it will take more than one hour to recover all the information.
First, let's look at an example of how the wonderful utility Titanium Backup works. With it, you can easily save absolutely all the files and settings of the Android mobile OS. This is extremely important, since a phone backup is often able to save your personal data and settings for Internet banking applications. Itâs not worth saying how it can help out.
What will be required for backup?
To do this, you need only two things:
- Make Root. Of course, rarely come across smartphones and tablets that are already âruttedâ by the manufacturer, but in most cases you will have to do it yourself;
- Utility Titanium Backup.
What is Root for?
And why not just copy important data without resorting to such tricks? The fact is that the OS from Google is "open" only in words. In fact, it happens that the user does not have full access to the file system of his own device. Moreover, even many programs do not have extended rights, and therefore it will not be possible to do without Root rights.
Titanium Backup at a Glance
Now let's talk about the Titanium Backup program itself. There is a paid and free version, and for ordinary users the possibilities of a free program are quite enough.
A little about installing it
If you install the program from a memory card, do not forget to set the option in the device settings that allows it. The installation itself does not take much time. After the first launch, the utility will ask you for superuser rights. Do not forget to click on the âAllowâ button, simultaneously ticking the âRememberâ box.
We remind you that the capabilities of the program are quite enough to disable your device, so carefully read the comments for each menu, do not click on all buttons in a row.
Create a backup
And now we will learn how to backup an Android smartphone or tablet. Once again, we remind you: in no case do not use any options if you absolutely do not know about their purpose. So, the utility has started. What to do next?
At the top of the programâs working window there is a button âBackupsâ. After clicking it, the Backup dialog box opens. It should contain a clause on the complete copying of user data, programs and settings. Opposite it there is a Start button, which you need to click on.
A dialog box will appear in which the user can select the programs that he wants to save. Click on the button âRun batch processing of applicationsâ. It remains only to wait while the Android backup is in progress. Copying time directly depends on the number of installed programs and the power of your device.
After the process is completed, you will again be thrown into a window where there will be a complete list of all created backups. Look at the signs on the right: if there are no exclamation points anywhere, then everything went well. If they are, then something went wrong during the copy process.
Very often this happens when you incorrectly received Root rights. We cannot tell in detail about this process, since it differs for each type of smartphone or tablet, but we want to warn against the use of dubious root-in-one-click programs. As a rule, they canât do anything sensible.
What to do in case of data loss?
But how to restore the backup by deploying it to the device, if some kind of trouble did happen?
Itâs easy to do this. Go to the âProcessingâ item again, click on the âRecoveryâ item. A dialog box will open in which it is better to immediately select the "Restore all software with data" option so that your phone or tablet returns to a fully operational state, which was lost due to some external reasons.
However, sometimes it may be necessary to restore a backup of a single program. To do this, go to the "Backups" section, and then mark it with a flag. After that, click on the âRecoveryâ button, and then wait a while.
What other backup programs exist?
A good alternative to the above application is a program for backup TWRP Recovery. It has a fairly simple and ascetic interface, but quite decent functionality. In addition, the menu of this utility will quickly understand even not too experienced user.
In the first dialog box, just click on the Backup button, after which we get to the backup menu. We tick off all the items that interest us, and then click on the Swipe to Back Up button.
When making a backup of a tablet, itâs best to choose Dropbox as the place to save important data (its support comes âout of the boxâ) or the computerâs hard drive. We recommend choosing these media in connection with the large size of the resulting image, which simply might not fit on the deviceâs memory card.
To restore the system from a previously created copy, you need to click on the Restore button in the main program window. As in the previous case, you can restore the entire system as well as some programs by checking the boxes next to their names.
As you can see, creating a backup using this utility cannot be called such a complicated action.
Finally, note the wonderful Helium program. Like its "progenitor" of the Periodic System, the utility is extremely light and simple. The interface is completely Russified, so no additional tips on its development will be required. Before making a backup of the firmware using it, you will also have to get Root rights for full access to the deviceâs file system.