DurableCopy

We often believe that personal data loss will never happen to us. But as a matter of fact every person can confront data loss. The standard lifetime of a hard disk is from 2 to 5 years. In addition, there is also a probability of equipment failure.

In the corporate world it is accepted to make backup copies every day. It is often thought there is no need to do so for a home user.

But when creating backup copies a risk is taken with data, all the same. A backup copy of your data may turn out to be unreadable. Even later it may be read correctly after burning, but may contain bad sectors in a week or month. It depends on the quality of the backup disc, but sometimes even qualitative discs can have errors.

Our recommendations

First of all there is a need to classify data by its importance, type, and size. An important point is to make regular backup copy for important documents as soon as you have changed them or stop your work. The whole process of creating a backup copy must be automatic to the limit in order to not waste time carrying out jobs.

So, for instance, you can use the program KutinSoft Sync Last Files Professional for quickly marking changed files among a large number of files. We regularly use this simple instrument for quick marking of changed files of program source codes. One often has to cancel changes in program source codes and to get back to files of backup copies. If you don't want to use such a program for flexible marking of changed files, but you want to save files in a certain folder, then you can just sort the folder by column "Last time of change" in Windows Explorer.

We offer to make backup copying of personal data on CDs/DVDs. However, there is no need to make daily backup copy on CDs/DVDs right away. It is possible to put it on a flash disk. Ensure that the data is not only held on the hard disk.

It is important not forget to make version copies of important documents. One may think this it is an unnecessary precautionary measure, but sometimes in practice situation arise when it is necessary to view a document version which was made several days ago.

If you work with important documents at work, you should not rely only on the system administrator in a question of safety for your data. But in accordance with corporate rules you can not make backup copies on your personal disk, and must use your personal place in the file net server. In addition, you can make backup copies on the same hard disk you work on. Even this unreliable variant is better than not making backup copies at all. Because, in the first place, you can easily go back to previous file versions. Secondly, among cases of hard disks failure there are almost no cases of total destruction of the disk surface. If your files were recorded in several copies, then they will be more easy to restore using a special-purpose technical service.

It is convenient to back up personal settings by means of some special-purpose program, for example, by Wizard of transfer files and settings for Microsoft Windows XP.

Gather all backup files copies required to save in a special folder (ie in folder Backup of Temp catalogue). It is better to record files to a disk in the minimal speed of time (if your program supports managing of record speeds). There is a minimal speed required for improving disk burning.

It is better to record data on a disk in two copies. It is permissible to record both file copies on the same disk, but in different directories. However, it is better to make copies on two different disks.

Either two files copies are justified or not?

Are two file copies justified or not? For example, some unreadable sectors may have appeared on your backup copy. If only one copy was made, the files would have been lost. If you have two file copies, one copy may be good (there is a 50% chance). If this file size is 1 Mb, and the lost block is 64 Kb, then you know that the second copy also has a damaged block. In this case, both file copies would be lost. However, if you use Durable Copy, and copy the first file, then it is possible to change all damaged sectors from the second copy. The likelihood of damaged sectors matching with one another will not be more than 6.25%! This means, that by using two backup file copies and Durable Copy, there will be a chance to restore data not by 50%, but by 93.75%! But this variant is not the best one. In practice, programs for backup data copying create files with very large sizes (many hundred Mb). Taking into consideration that there is usually one damaged sector on an entire disk, the chances for restoration will be not 50%, but more than 99.9%!

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