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Catch the Backup Habit

I know you've heard this, but the smartest thing you can do is back up every day. Don't roll your eyes. It's not that big a deal, and I have a few easy ways you can do it.

The strategy that works for me is to start with a full-image backup, do an incremental backup every day (as well as following any major product installation), and create a new full-image backup once a week.

I use Acronis's $50 True Image to back up my system's hard drive onto a 400GB Seagate Barracuda internal SATA drive ($112) that slides into a Addonics Snap-In SATA Mobile Rack($26). Backing up to and restoring from an internal drive is considerably faster than doing the same things with an external USB drive.

Once my full-image backup is in place, I click Operations, Schedule, Task To set a time to automatically back up just the files that change afterward. Unless I create lots of big files in a 24-hour period, the incremental backup doesn't take long.

Since I'm a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I also do weekly backups to an external USB drive that I store at a neighbor's (click here for the details). Hard-drive expert Jon L. Jacobi prefers to back up all of the PCs on his LAN to a NAS box.

Reader Question

I have 82 $NtUninstall folders in my C:Windows folder. If my system is operating properly and I don't want to uninstall any Windows updates, is it safe to delete these folders?

Brad Loomis, Morro Bay, California

There's a neat way to remove the unnecessary ones. Here are instructions on manually removing the folders individually. My method is safer and easier: Grab XP_Remove_Hotfix_Backup, a free tool from Doug Knox. It's the surest way to delete the folders and their Registry entries while retaining essential hotfixes that you may someday need again. For $5, you get a version that lets you selectively remove hotfixes.