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Index
| Before it becomes necessary | Data
Location | Backup Hardware | Methods
| The Process | Restoring | |
There are two important terms used during the backup and restore operations, they are "Source" and "Target" (sometimes referred to as the "Destination".) These refer to your hard drive and backup device. When backing up, the source is you computer's hard drive and the target is the backup device (CD, tape drive or whatever.) When restoring these two terms are inverted so the backup device is now the source!
The only way to really know if your backup is operating correctly is to restore from the backup but do this test before it becomes necessary! Yes a somewhat time consuming process but it's the only way to know for sure.
First, never, ever blindly trust your backup media (tape or disk.) Always backup to multiple medias and occasionally, do a test restore.
Restoring is basically the reverse of backing up. Instead of saving to backup, the computer will copy files and folders from backup and replace the files and folders.
Check the options before restoring: There are generally a few settings:
If you must restore files, the replace all is the option you will want. Prompt is as useless option in our opinion since you will first pick and choose the desired folder/files before restoring.
When you do restore you may consider restoring to an alternate location such as a temporary folder:
This method gives you a second copy of the current data and the chance to undo the restoration in the event something goes wrong.
Throughout we have mentioned that backing-up/restoring applications and the operating system is not practical but we have to clarify a little. There are devices and software that can restore everything including all applications and even the operating system.
Applications like HP Disaster Recovery and Norton's Ghost can create an exact "image" copy of a computers drive. This makes it possible to restore the entire drive's contents.