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MFDigital CD DVD Information Library
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
 
DVD Backup Made Easy
Title: DVD Backup Made Easy

Author: Emil Malmberg

Article:
If you are running backups on a regular basis, you have probably
come across the problem that CDRs or CDRWs are simply to small
for some backups. While you could split your backups to multiple
CDs, this is not a very good solution if you have to backup
10GBs of data. The solution to this problem is to use DVDRs or
DVDRWs instead. Since a DVD can easily store as much as 7 CDs,
you could backup 5 to 10 GBs to a single DVD with a little
compression. Using DVDs instead of CDs will speed up large
backups considerably and will also greatly simplify storage.

Compression In order to use the DVD media more efficiently you
will probably want to compress your backup before writing it to
the DVD. Compression can often reduce the size of a backup by
50% or more, doubling the capacity of your DVDs. A DVDR can
usually store 4.7GBs of data and with compression you should be
able to store about 10GBs on a single DVD. If you have ever
tried to compress a 10GB file you probably know that this will
take a lot of time. If you have a 20GB harddrive you might also
have a problem storing the temporary uncompressed backup file.
Since WinBackup compresses files on-the-fly backup operations
are performed considerably faster. The built-in compression also
reduces the need for a large temporary storage location and
makes it much easier to run large backups to DVD-R or DVD-RW.

Encryption When storing backups on CDs or DVDs, security can
easily become a problem. Since DVDs can easily get lost or even
stolen, you need to protect your backups from unauthorized
access by using some kind of password protection or even
encryption. A backup often contains emails, important documents
and other sensitive information. In fact, if you backup your
entire harddrive, your backup could even contain passwords to
computers and websites. WinBackup allows you to password protect
and encrypt your backups with up to 256 bit encryption, making
it virtually impossible for anyone without the correct password
to access your files. Since encryption can be performed
automatically on all backups you do not need to worry about
security every time to save a backup to DVD.

Integrated DVD Writing Even though many pc owners have a DVD
writer installed in their computer, surprisingly few use it to
backup important data. One reason for this could be that many
users feel that writing to DVDs is a little complicated. With
WinBackup this is no longer true. WinBackups integrated CD/DVD
writing features makes it easier than ever before to write
backups directly to CDs or DVDs without knowing anything about
DVD Writing. Storing your backup on a DVD is as simple as
inserting an empty DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+R or DVD+RW into
your DVD Writer and clicking on "Run Backup". You can even leave
a DVDRW in the DVD writer and schedule WinBackup to
automatically update the contents daily. WinBackup also makes it
easy to backup emails, documents or internet favorites with
built-in shortcuts to important user data.

About the author:
Software developer for LIUtilities ( www.liutilities.com target="_blank" )