PC backup software: An Examination of a Trend - This article describes the vast aspects of pc backup software.
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This article describes the vast aspects of pc backup software.
Author: Susan Oliver
Date: Feb 4, 2011 - 11:15:06 AM
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As computers and hard drives become increasingly defective, experienced users try different backup software to insure them against data loss and system failure. Similar to all other types of programs, one backup software package rarely fits all purposes and depending on the user's setting, several backup utilities may become necessary. For example, users often need one backup tool for their server appliance and one for each personal computer.
On the PC backup market, one may find various pc backup software providers with different strengths in each product. The typical PC user would want Microsoft Windows, application, and files backed up on a regular basis. Usually a simple disk image is enough but more advanced users with more files than the average user may want to invest in good file backup software.
Hard drive burglary affects computers but also media. Especially backup media is subject theft because its completeness of information-a company's backup tape in possession of a thief can be a real disaster because the entire company's intellectual property is within that one medium. The thieves can analyze the tape at their leisure, hidden from the public, and leak sensitive material to competitors. The industry's answer to this problem is naturally backup encryption and the recommendation to physically secure backup media, for example in safes.
IT administrators who wish to get their hands on a good server backup software package may want to focus on the file backup capabilities of their product. While a Windows backup may be necessary, it is usually more important to back up files quickly and reliably. The recent popularity of Server Core and other installations of limited GUI operating systems may make data recovery plans more complicated since most backup tools do not support such environments. Administrators would therefore want to check on their backup tool before planning a data center rollout.
Drive imaging is critical on home computers since users rarely deploy file backup software to protect their data. Usually disk imaging is applied on an entire physical hard disk, but it can technically be applied to separate partitions as well, such as a single drive letter. The pro of drive imaging is that it creates an exact byte-level copy of the information, including hidden file system information, such as residues of deleted files.
Since the growth of virtual machines, virtual machine backup has gained more of an importance. In VMware, a backup of a virtual machine while running usually requires the VMDK file to be backed up. To back up VMDK files, however, one needs to either stop the virtual machine, or the backup program needs to connect to VMware Server to get access to the live virtual disk file. In the latter case a specialized tool may be necessary.
A virtual machine backup script for VMware may help to run a virtual server backup against the virtual host but the results may be less than optimal without a specialized software package. By replicating all virtual machines, the administrator may be able to provide some disaster prevention; however, if many virtual machines or very large ones need to be backed up, each virtual server copy may take too long to complete and use too much storage.
Without getting into technical details, a virtual server backup software copies virtual server files and settings. To back up virtual machines, one needs to either take them offline from the virtual host server, or a dedicated backup software needs to be applied that works closely with the virtual host server system to access the underlying virtual disks.
A smart solution to save storage space is to generate an incremental backup. Incremental backups always refer to the state of the last backup cycle and extract the difference between the two cycles. The disadvantage of incremental backup is that each incremental step needs to be restored as well during the recovery process; hence, incremental recoveries take longer than that of differential backups.
The latest novelty in the industry is delta compression, also known as file version differencing, which essentially shrinks backup storage requirements to a bare minimum. Delta compression is applied in many areas but is has been predominantly popular on servers with high activity.
Susan is a writer for file backup software and games.
View all articles by Susan Oliver
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