Posts Tagged ‘Backup Copies’

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Commercial Software That Allows You to Easily Backup Your Dvds

Friday, June 12th, 2009

James Fohl is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service — Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/commercial-software-allows-easily-backup-dvds.html

Commercial Software That Allows You to Easily Backup Your Dvds

Have you ever thought about your DVDs, and wished there was a simple way to make backup copies of them? Let’s face it, DVDs aren’t cheap. Another piece of common knowledge that you can throw in to that mix is that DVDs aren’t durable. You may have just spent a hundred dollars on the complete first season of your favorite TV show only to find the discs unreadable because your kids gained control of the discs.

If you have young children in your household, you really have to start considering what options exist in allowing you to make backups of your DVDs.

A DVD’s worst nightmare is the dirty hands of a seven year old child. The child will get dirt all over the disc, scratches on the disc from rough handling, and if the disc is still readable after that, then you’ll probably soon see the DVD flying through the air as if it was a Frisbee.

Because of this great limitation to the wonderful DVD format, it makes perfect sense for any family with small children to consider making backup copies of your purchased DVDs.

Thankfully several software companies have seen the need for software that allows users to easily make backup copies of their DVDs, and now such software is readily available both on the internet and at your local software store.

1CLICK DVD Copy is one of the greatest pieces of DVD backup software there is available. With one click, the software will quickly make a backup copy of any DVD movie. The publisher of this software states that you can easily have a backup copy burned within fifteen minutes!

DVD Wizard Pro is another excellent piece of DVD backup software. While it does not offer all of the advanced capabilities of 1CLICK DVD, it is cheaper and offers other abilities to the user such as the ability to easily create backup copies of your Playstation 2 and XBOX video games.

Cosmi DVD Ripper is a value priced piece of computer software that allows users to easily create backup copies of their DVDs. Priced at under ten dollars, Cosmi is not without its own set of problems. If your DVD movie is longer than a hundred minutes, then you’ll have to find another piece of software; Cosmi for some reason is only capable of copying the first hundred minutes.

After recommending a couple software titles, this list would not be complete if it did not list any worthless pieces of DVD backup software.

Roxio Easy DVD Copy is one product that’s hard to recommend. While the product’s box promptly displays ‘Copy Hollywood DVDS’ this is simply not the case. Roxio Easy DVD Copy will only copy unprotected media, which is very unfortunate considering the fact that ninety nine percent of commercial DVDs are encoded with copy protection. Roxio believes that after creating trust with millions of computer users, they can pull a fast one. Roxio Easy DVD Copy is simply a horrible product, and especially with its retail price of fifty dollars.

Commercial software is not your only option for making backup copies of your DVDs; several free pieces of software are out there waiting to be utilized.

Besides commercial software, a lot of free applications exist on the internet that allow you to backup your DVDs. Unfortunately, these pieces of software are not exactly the easiest things to use, but if you wish to save some money and just spend your time learning how to use the free software, in the end it’s your best choice.

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Getting Started: Making Backups of Your CDs

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

James Fohl is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the best online backup software — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/getting-started-making-backups-of-your-cds.html

Getting Started: Making Backups of Your CDs

Whether you own a collection of music CDs, video games, or just CDs filled with various forms of media, you know that they are not indestructible, and thus you need to make backups of them.

Your CD collection is a pretty big investment. Just look at how much money you spent on each of your music CDs, and each piece of computer software. From all of this money, don’t you think you deserve to create backups of your investments?

Let’s look at your investment. The average music CD is priced at fifteen dollars, while most commercial video game CDs can cost a price of fifty dollars. Now look at what CDs are. They are not the most durable things in the universe, as they can easily get scratched, smashed or destroyed.

Thankfully with the advent of the many wonderful cd burners available to consumers, the ability for users to backup their collection of CDs is now. The only major requirements for making backup copies of your CDs are that you have a CD writer / burner, blank CD-R discs, and a software application designed to help users utilize their CD burners.

If you intend to make backup copies of your music CDs, be sure to use CD-R media and not CD-RW discs, otherwise you may run into some compatibility problems with your music CD player.

Remember that is is important that when you are making backup copies of your music CDs that you do not use CD-RW discs. The reason for this is because CD-RW discs are somewhat different than regular CD-R discs, and are not readable in most music CD players. While new CD players now have the ability to play CD-RW discs, if you are unsure whether your player allows you to play CD-RW discs, then it is best to just use regular CD-R media.

The equipment needed to make backup copies of your CDs is very inexpensive. CD burners can be purchased well under $50 for an entry unit, and packs of fifty or more CD-R discs can be had for less than $20.

Almost every new computer sold today ships with a CD writer / burner installed. If your computer does not have a CD burner, you can visit your local computer store and purchase an entry level drive for under fifty dollars. Blank CD-R media is ultra cheap, and if you shop around you will be able to find large spindles of blank discs for a very low sum of money.

Once you have the CD burner, the discs you wish to backup, and the blank CD-R media, you will have to get software that allows you to make copies (backups) of CDs. While a lot of CD burning software exists, it is highly recommended that you use a software package that is devoted entirely to duplicating cds.

Some of the best choices for duplicating CDs are the utilities found within the Nero CD Burning Suite, and a small shareware application called BlindWrite, which was given four out of five stars in a editor’s review at Download.com

Remember that you are entitled to create backup copies of your CDs, no matter if they are software or music CDs. Please also keep in mind that it is not legal to redistribute these backup CDs to your friends, co-workers, etc.

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Backup to CD

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Andrew Whitehead is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular tool for online backup and recovery — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/backup-to-cd.html

The Importance of Keeping a Backup

If you have ever wondered about the importance of keeping a backup, imagine how you would feel if a virus destroyed the contents of your hard drive? Or a problem could only be solved by using a system recovery CD, wiping out all your data in the process? Or you run FDISK and accidentally remove a partition on the wrong drive? Or your hard drive dies, taking your data with it? Mistakes will always happen and all disc drives eventually expire. Without a backup it is a disaster, with a backup it is reduced to a very large nuisance.

Files That You Need to Backup

A private user only needs to back up files that they have created or modified themselves. Computers use both program and data files; programs can be reloaded from the original discs, but your data can only be reloaded from backup copies.

Making a backup is simpler if you store all your files in one place. Letting each program use its own default storage file results in you data being scattered all over your hard drive. If you are using Windows 98 or Me put everything into My Documents, in Windows 2000 and XP use Documents and Settings.

What is Needed to Make a Backup

There a choice of methods you can employ to make backup copies of your files. You can simply drag and drop the files you’ve created to a CD, copy them using the XCOPY command, use a third party CD mastering program to copy your files, or you can use Windows or a third party backup programs to create a backup to CD.

If you have software such as DirectCD drag-and-drop is extremely easy and you can use a CD-RW, but it is labor intensive if you have a lot of files, hard to keep organized, and you will need compatable software to read the disc.

Using the XCOPY command allows you to copy files from a specified folder made after a specified date, eg ‘XCOPY “\Documents and Settings”\*.* /s/d:03-15-02 K:\’ copies everything from Documents and Settings created after 03-15-04 to the specified drive.

A CD mastering program, such as Nero, allows you backup your files to a CD-R. While this takes more steps than drag-and-drop, the resulting disc can be read by almost any CD-ROM, CD-R, or CD-RW drive without installing a compatible UDF reader program first.

The disadvantage with these methods is that they are unable to create a backup larger than the media it is stored on. If this is a problem, you will need a true backup program capable of ‘media spanning’.

Backup programs differ from ordinary file saving by compressing files, storing many files in a single file proprietary to the backup program, and using the ‘Archive’ file attribute should you ask for a backup of changed or new files only. They often allow Backups to be stored as files for transfer to CD later, and a disk image to be made for disaster recovery.

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Backup Device Options for Older Computers

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

James Fohl is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular tool for online backup and recovery — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/backup-device-options-for-older-computers.html

Backup Device Options for Older Computers

Do you have a backup device for your computer system? If you were not aware, a backup device is just a fancy term given to any device installed on your computer system that allows you to make backup copies of your data.

Some common examples of these backup devices are floppy disk drives, CD writers / burners, zip drives, and external hard drives.

Most computers sold today come with a CD writer / burner, or a more advanced DVD burner, which allows users to burn not only DVD-R media, but also CD-R media, since almost all DVD burners are backwards compatible with the CD-R format.

If your computer system is not equipped with a CD or DVD burner, then you should probably begin to shop around for a backup device if you are serious about your computer data.

While a floppy disk drive was considered as the perfect backup device ten years ago, the storage limitations of each disk pretty much make the floppy disk obsolete.

Your computer system may not have a CD burner / writer, but you may think just because you have a floppy disk drive you are safe. While floppy disks were the preferred medium of data storage in the past, the technical limitations of their capacity (1.44 megabytes) is pretty much a joke to modern computer users. Because a floppy disk is only able to hold less than two megabytes of data, no computer user should consider a floppy drive to be a backup device.

Instead users should look at their viable options. If your computer system is more than five years old, a CD burner / writer is kind of a worthless investment because your computer system will be unable to supply the data to the burner quick enough. Thankfully, Iomega continues to manufacture their wide variety of Zip drives that will work effortlessly with these particular systems.

A zip disk is a disk based backup device capable of holding 100, 250, or even 750 megabytes of data.

For those who do not know what a zip drive is, it is basically a disk drive that utilizes disks capable of holding 100, 250, or 750 megabytes of data. Several different versions of the many zip drive models have been released over the past ten years that allow users a variety of options in connecting a zip drive to their system.

An external zip drive is an awesome backup device for older computers because not only is it capable of storing large amounts of data and information, but you can easily use drive and disks on other computer systems.

Iomega Zip drives are excellent choices as a backup device for older computers and their data. The price of the zip disks is however relatively expensive when compared to CD-R media.

The major downside in choosing an Iomega Zip drive as a backup device is the price of the media. While CD-R media are priced at literally pennies per disk, Zip disks are quite expensive, starting at around ten dollars for a single disk. The disks however are very durable, even more so than a 3.5 inch floppy disk, and are guaranteed to last several years.

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Don’t Loose Hope with File Recovery!

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

James Fohl is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based software for online data backup — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/dont-loose-hope-with-file-recovery.html

Don’t Loose Hope with File Recovery!

If you accidentally deleted an important file, you are probably cussing at your computer screen, while pulling large chunks of your hair out wishing there was a way to make an easy recovery.

There is a small checklist of things to do in this situation, and it largely depends on what kind of file you deleted and what program you are using.

The first thing you should always do in a file recovery mission is try and remember the filenames of the files that you deleted. Once you have the filenames written down, you are ready to begin a little diagnostic work that will hopefully solve your file recovery problems.

Many users tend to ignore the Recycling Bin during their efforts of file recovery because of a simple prompt.

Look in the Recycling Bin to see if the files are there. A lot of people skip over the trash can because the software they used to delete the files did not ask the user if they were sure they wanted to delete the files (..and by delete the program means put it into the trash).

If the files you are trying to make a recovery of are found within the confines of the digital garbage dump, then bingo. Simply restore your files and glue the clumps of hair back on your head. If however you were unable to find the files buried in the trash, don’t start cussing again just yet.

Open up a Find dialog by either selecting Find in the Start menu or by pressing the F3 key. Once the find dialog is present, type in the appropriate filename BUT be sure to remove the file extension.

It is not unusual for specific software, such as Microsoft Word to make backup copies of files for recovery.

Sometimes the specific program, or even Windows itself will create a copy of the file in another directory, or a backup file (same filename, but with a different file extension) in a temporary folder (C:\windows\temp\). If you find that the system has indeed made copies of your deleted files, then there you go, the recovery of your files was a success.

If however this attempt was a failure, and you did not come across any copies of your deleted files, then you are probably going to need to do a quick search on the internet for file recovery software.

File recovery software is not miracle software; it has its limitations.

Keep in mind that while some file recovery software is freeware, a lot of it available on the internet requires payment before the program is actually considered usable. Also keep in mind that if you do plan on using file recovery software, than remember that it does not work miracles. You will not be able to make a recovery of the files you deleted a week ago.. in fact with most of the free software available you’ll be happy if you are able to make a recovery of the files you deleted an hour ago.

If the files are very very very important it is recommended that you skip all of these options and consult a hard drive recovery company so that your data is not lost forever.

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