Hard Disk Maintenance

Working on a PC is more enjoyable for us if we sure that our data is safe within our hard disk. There are three tools that can be use for hard disk maintenance, Imaging, Partitioning, and Backup.

For Forrest Gump, life is like a chocolate box, full of surprises. On the contrary, PC users don't like surprises because most of them end with something bad. PC security is not only about malware and virus, data protection is important too. That's why we need imaging software to make backup to prevent lost of data.

Most of notebooks today is equipped with one important function : partitioning. This function can make a special partition to keep owner's private data. This will keep the data secure even if we must re-install Windows. Let's take a look at the three tools for hard disk maintenance.

Imaging

For imaging process, every imaging software has already reached a high standard. On-th-fly backup system or internet image saving already become a standard features. The different is only at the speed of the process. Another feature that already become a standard is image update. Almost every imaging software can update image without writing the image from the beginning. It only save the latest change of the image. Beside that, to make image, imaging software use a special protected area on hard disk. This area become a single locked partition.

Partitioning

We should make several partition in our disk to prevent "total lost" case. For example, we should put operating system in one partition, and data in another partition. This will prevent the lost of data if we re-format or re-install the operating system. Windows Vista has a partitioning function and works better than Windows XP. Create, expand, and delete partition is a very easy task in Windows Vista. This function can be found in Control Panel "Administration | Computer Administration | Hard Disk | Hard Disk Administration".

Backup

Backup is one of the most important hard disk maintenance tools. Backup can be done manually the hard way (Bakup to CD or DVD or something like that) or we can use imaging software. There are two type of backup in imaging software. incremental backup and differential backup. In incremental backup, what will be saved is only the latest change at the latest backup. But in differential backup, it saves the change from the full backup.

There are several recommended software to do this hard disk maintenance software. Disk Director Suite 10 (True Image Home 2009), Partition Manager 9 (Drive Backup 9 Proffesional), Partition Magic 8 (Norton Ghost 14), and Partition Commander 10 (Perfect Image 11) are several example of the recommended software.

That's all for now, I hope this article can be a useful tips for performing hard disk maintenance.