Free DVD Data Backup
January 1st, 2009The wacky world of data backup can seem as if everyone is talking or writing in another language. When you read about a great backup shareware, or free to low-cost software, never assume that you know what the product description is talking about. You need to read the small print and some free DVD data backup reviews in order to fully comprehend what you are getting yourself into.
What Does It All Mean?
When this writer first heard about free DVD data backup, I thought it was that you bought a DVD that you could store your entire hard drive onto. I was wrong. There are mirror programs available that can store your entire hard drive, but they are pricey and no DVDs are required. Free DVD data backup also doesn’t mean that if you purchase a backup program, you’re sent a free DVD of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
What computer geeks usually mean by a free DVD data backup program is a program that specifically backups up media files only, such as music pr movies. They can play back your music or movies with the same picture quality and extras as the originals. Ideally, you can store many movies or DVDs on one free DVD data backup program. Still, there are many variations on this theme, depending on the program.
Trial Runs
There are also paid services and programs that store your data, including media files. Some people prefer to use these paid services to totally free DVD data backup shareware because they have technical support and someone to complain to if something goes wrong. The main reason why free DVD data backup shareware is free is because once you download it, you’re basically on your own.
But there are vast differences in the prices of this software. Always choose the free trail version of the backup software first. Although most trial versions claim they are good for thirty days, you usually find that they are only good for fourteen days – fifteen if you’re lucky. However, two weeks is plenty of time to see if you and your computer can get along with the software.
Things To Look For
Whether you eventually choose free DVD data backup shareware or pay for backup software, there are still some things you need to pay attention for. You need to see that it doesn’t slow your computer to a crawl for a long time. It also needs to be easy to use.

A lot of free automatic data backup shareware is more than two years old and may not be able to run with Windows XP or Vista. Also, these kinds of programs often just compress your files and place them on another part of your hard drive so that it’s all still on your computer. A lot of people feel their data is safer if it is in more than one secure place. The first is their computer and the second is on someone else’s website.
“PC World” is one of the leading computer magazines on the planet. Although the magazine is great, this writer prefers PC World’s website. They are sort of like the “Consumer Reports” of shareware and paid programs. They also determine what programs are safe, what are out of date and have a place for readers to rant or rave about the specific program. There are direct links to download the freeware data backup programs right in their reviews.
The best free data backup programs don’t use websites like paid services do. What free data backup services does, instead, is to compress all of your computer files into one file and then you store that file onto a separate disk or other storage device. For example, in Windows, most documents can be compressed to Zip files. Things you can put on a free backup data software program are images, documents and spreadsheets. Some can handle music files and some can’t.
You should also be aware of the Virtual Device Interface, and this is the programming interface for the Backup Restore API. What this feature does is it provides function calls to manipulate the backup and restore functionality in SQL server.