Using Windows 7 Backup vs Remote Backup Services

Using Windows 7 Backup vs Remote Backup Services
Windows 7 Backup Windows 7 does not provide a remote backup service. Instead, you back up your files to a secondary internal hard drive, an external hard drive, or another machine on your home or office network. To access Windows 7 Backup, select Start ->Computer. Right-click your disk drive (usually C:), and select Properties. On theTools tab, clickBack up now…
The device most used for Windows-based backups is an external hard drive. Once a pricey commodity, external drives like the Western Digital WD Elements and the Seagate Elements now offer up to 1TB of storage for around $100. (It’s possible to write your backups to DVD if you have a DVD-RW. The downside is that you can only store 4.7GB of data on a single DVD. Also, Windows 7 doesn’t retain file permission information when it archives to DVD.)

Winodws 7 Backup can be used to backup your personal data – your documents, pictures, music, and videos. It can also backup a system image, which is a full snapshot of your PC, including the Windows 7 operating system itself. System images are the fastest way to restore Windows 7 and all your installed applications to a new hard drive should your current drive fail.

Remote Backup Services
Despite being much improved over Vista, Windows 7 Backup still has limitations. Many users have reported that Windows 7 Backup is slow to the point of unusable. Microsoft itself has acknowledged that Backup is very sluggish if users have over 400GB of data. System image backups are not incremental: taking a new system snapshot requires saving a completely new system image to your backup location.
Instead of wrestling with Windows 7 Backup, many home users would be better served sticking with one of the many remote backup service providers that support backing up your files to a secure location over the Internet. For a small monthly fee, companies like Mozy and Carbonite provide small Windows applications that back up all of your personal files on a regular schedule. After a large initial backup, backups are incremental – only new or modified files are sent to the remote server.
Mozy Home for Windows You can restore your files from the Internet should your drive fail, or port an old computer’s files to a new PC or laptop. Plus, you can easily restore individual files that you accidentally deleted. Remote backup provides a level of data security that you won’t get from a single external hard drive sitting on your desktop. Companies like Mozy and Carbonite make redundant copies of all of your files, guaranteeing that they’ll never lose any of your data due to a single hardware or electrical failure.
Remote backup provides a level of data security that you won’t get from a single external hard drive sitting on your desktop. Companies like Mozy and Carbonite make redundant copies of all of your files, guaranteeing that they’ll never lose any of your data due to a single hardware or electrical failure. While remote backup services are great for personal data, they don’t work well for system images, which take up tens or hundreds of gigabytes of space. If you use a remote backup service, it’s still a good idea to have a second computer or external hard drive on which to save a system image in case of a catastrophic hard drive failure. One option is to use remote backup services for your personal files, and Windows 7 Backup for a monthly system image. Or you can skip Windows 7 Backup entirely and use an all-in-one solution like Acronis True Image, which supports both local snapshots and remote backup over the Internet.