Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

Backup, restore, and clone hard drives using Easeus Todo Backup

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 03:34 AM PDT

In the past, I've talked a lot about backups! Backup software for servers, backing up you PC, backing up the registry, etc, etc. It's never a bad thing to have your data backed up ten different ways.

Personally, I have local backups, remote backups, backups of just my files, backups of my entire system, and backups of my physical hardware! The amount we rely on computer these days necessitates this kind of paranoia.

And it's always great if you can create PC backups using free software! Easeus To-do Backup 1.0 is a free software backup utility that lets you backup and restore entire hard disks or partitions.

The interface is clean and very intuitive, making it easy for anyone to use. Here are some of the good features of Todo Backup:

Backup system data, partition, or entire disk to an image and restore it quickly.
Clone a disk (copy all data from one disk to another)
Mount and browse backup images files as virtual drives
Check image files to make sure they are not corrupted
Copy using either file-by-file or sector-by-sector copying
Ability to backup the data straight to CD or DVD thereby saving time
Excellent help file with lots of information and explanations
Ability to compress and password protect image files
Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file formats
Supports IDE, SCSI, USB, SATA, and Firewire hard drive interfaces

There are a few scenarios where this type of program really comes in handy. Let's say you have a computer with one hard drive which is 30 GB in size. Now let's say you're close to filling it up and you would like to upgrade to a much bigger hard drive without having to reinstall everything and copying data manually.

Well, with Easeus Todo Backup, you can simply clone the drive and restore it to the new hard drive. That's it! Set the partition on the new hard drive to Active and you're up and running on a brand new hard drive.

Also, if you ever download a virus or your system becomes unstable due to software issues or hard drive failure, you can quickly restore the backup to get back to the pre-crash state.

Restoring is a piece of cake as it lets you create the bootable recovery media in the software itself. Also, it has several bootable options, so if one boot method fails, you can restore using another method.

Overall, the software is excellent because of the number of features it has and it's ease of use. I used to use Acronis True Image for backing up my computer, but this software has all the same options and it's free. Enjoy!