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Byline: Terry Relph-Knight
Working with disk images
With hard disks today commonly offering between 80 and 500GB, disk images are large awkward things to manage. Some of the imaging software in this group test offers an almost bewildering range of options, so it helps if you have a clear idea of the various features available in your chosen imaging software and a clear strategy for your approach to image backups.
The other half of the solution
The big stumbling block for many people when backing up or imaging a system is that the software is only half the solution. Image storage, in the form of a Firewire or USB plug-in drive, or a network server with dedicated imaging space, is also required. Even with image compression, this will need to be close to the size of the source data set. Luckily the price of large internal hard drives is now reasonable, and even external drives (pictured) are dropping rapidly in price: these are much more convenient as they can be removed and stored in a safe place away from your PC. You can even make your own external drive by buying a DIY enclosure for around [pounds sterling]20 or so.
Different types of backup
Image backups of many gigabytes can take a long time so many new imaging applications allow incremental and/or differential backup after the initial full image is saved. Incremental backups save space and time, since a chain of incremental files, each file containing only the changes made since the ...
Source: HighBeam Research, Working with disk images.(backup software)