IMAGE BACKUP / IMAGE COPY
How the image copy works / Why the image backup is important
An image backup or image copy is like a picture or mirror image of your entire drive. It is an exact bit by bit copy of your drive. A drive image is, in essence, a drive clone. The result of an image backup or image copy is quite different from what you get when you do a file by file data backup or file by file drive copy. Unlike a simple data backup or copy, an image backup also copies any partitions and system information that may be on your drive.
Data Protection Solutions by Arco offers two drive image software products.
EzBackup is backup software that performs a complete image backup and then allows you to run regularly scheduled automatic file backups.
EzMigration drive migration software transfers the entire contents of your hard drive to a new drive as a single image copy. EzMigration also handles any necessary partition expansion you may need if you are migrating to a larger drive.
The only requirement for creating an image backup or image copy is that your destination or backup drive must be as large or larger than your source drive. Obviously, you cannot transfer a drive image of a 120 GB drive onto an 80 GB drive. It’s okay if your backup drive is larger than your source drive. After creating the image copy of your drive, you will need to do regular periodic backups of your individual files in order to keep your backup up to date.
The drive image EzBackup Software or EzMigration Software created on your backup drive or destination drive has everything that’s on your source drive–even drive partitions (if your source drive has been partitioned). It includes your operating system, preferences, applications, and all of your data files as well as any application and/or driver updates you may have installed over time.
If your hard drive should fail or your operating system should become corrupted so that you can no longer get your source drive to boot, you can use the image backup EzBackup has created to restore your source drive to a working state or to transfer your drive information to a new replacement drive. The EzBackup image restore process is very simple, and when it is complete you will have all of your information restored to your corrupted or replacement drive and the drive will boot up and operate just as it did before your problem or drive failure occurred.
The image backup eliminates the need to reinstall your operating system or applications or to search for and download all of your application and device driver updates. Everything that was there before will be there again. What differentiates EzBackup from other backup software that claim to provide an image is that the data within the EzBackup drive image is not compressed or encrypted. That means that your backup data remains untouched and unchanged by the software. It also means that there is no chance that you will find your backup data corrupted or unusable when you need to restore it as can happen when compression or encryption techniques are employed.
Once EzBackup has created your image backup, you can schedule file and/or folder backups. Just tell EzBackup which files to backup and when you want backups to take place. EzBackup offers you the option to overwrite (or add to) the existing files in the image backup or to maintain multiple separate backups with dated restore points.