Clickfree PC Backup Systems Compared
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When was the last time you backed up your PC? If you're having trouble remembering, you could be in for a traumatic experience if and when your system fails. If you understand the need to do backups, but hate the hassle, keep reading. This article will introduce you to some backup solutions that take care of themselves, leaving you free to handle less tedious, more important tasks.
Like anything that usually “just works” – a cooler or TV, let’s say – most of us take our PCs for granted. So reliable have they become, so much an extension of ourselves, that many of us give little or no thought to the consequences of a breakdown. But like all machines, PCs do fail from time to time, and the component most likely to give up and die is often the one with the most devastating consequences: the hard drive. We all know we should back up our data regularly, and as we use our computers to store more and more irreplaceable data such as photos and music this is increasingly important. But how many of us actually do it?
One of the main reasons we back up less often than we should is the complexity and awkwardness of backup solutions. Unlike other system-critical utilities such as firewalls and anti-virus software, which we tend to install, configure and forget about, backup solutions have often remained clunky and demanding to live with. Hungry for system resources and reliant on schedules which often come round at awkward times, they are frequently difficult to accommodate into our work and leisure patterns.
However, with the declining cost of storage and a simultaneous increase in Internet bandwidth, a number of start-them-and-forget-them solutions are now available that overcome these difficulties, allowing anyone to achieve the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that a hard drive failure doesn’t have to be catastrophic. In this article I will take a look at three different click-free systems that work entirely in the background to keep your data safe without compromising the usability of your system: one software-only solution, one all-in-one hardware and software system, and one online backup service.
What is "click-free"?
The holy grail of the backup system is the truly no-click system: the one that backs up your critical files regularly and quietly with little or no user intervention required. These types of system can work in a number of different ways, for example by backing up to network drives, by using external storage such as USB or fire wire drives, or by using online resources. They can come as all-in-one solutions in which the software and hardware are bundled together, as standalone software that "talks'’ to an existing storage device, or as Internet-based utilities.
But they all have one thing in common. Once they are properly set up and configured, they require no further user input or control to maintain a continuous backup of your data. This may not sound like a particularly difficult challenge. For many years the task schedulers built into successive generations of Windows have apparently allowed any backup system to be run without user intervention.
However, scheduler-based solutions have suffered from many limitations that have undermined their effectiveness. For example, they have generally not been good at dealing with files that are in use when the backup is run. And what if the PC is switched off at the scheduled time? Then there has been the issue of the backup taking over the system, slowing it down to the point where it is unusable for the duration of the backup.
The truly click-free system suffers from none of these constraints. It runs the whole time the PC is switched on. It temporarily ignores files that are in use while ensuring that they are backed up as soon as they become available. And it works quietly in the background, not hogging system resources and making use of idle periods to do its most intensive work.
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