Backing up your computer data 3

A third way to back up your hard drive is to make an exact, bit for bit, copy of it. This type of backup, called a disk image, will help you to quickly restore your operating system, and all of your programs. This would be useful should a hard drive fail, your computer gets hosed while trying to install programs or updates or you just want to restore a fresh install of Windows. It’s not a good option, however, for backing up data. Use one of the methods mentioned in my first and second posts for backing up data.

There is a free program called PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost) that you can use to create a disk image of your hard drive. It is a Linux-based program that is very similar to Norton’s Ghost disk imaging program, except that PING is free! Give it a try.