Quote:
Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
Dropbox was my choice because I was downloading and adding books to Calibre from several different computers. However, I have since found that I only download books to my laptop.
i liked the fact that I had a backup on each computer that mirrored my dropbox folder. Of course, if that was junk, I really had nothing. I spent yesterday (about an hour) burning my library to a CD. I don't have a mirror backup (as Lady F suggests) and I think that is a good idea. I spent a lot of time to get my computer set up exactly the way I like it, and I would be devistated if I had to start over.
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I suspect this is just a matter of semantics but the term mirror suggests a RAID 1 configuration of HDDs. A computer with two drives in RAID 1 has a main drive and a second drive that is a duplicate (known as a mirror) of the main drive. What ever winds up on the main drive also winds up on the mirror. The idea is if the main drive should catastrophically die, the computer would continue to chug along on the mirror until a more convenient time when the RAID could be rebuilt with a new HDD. Such redunancy is warranted for applications where it is essential that computers be 100% reliable, such as the register at a business. Mirroring is a poor form of backup, however, because if the main drive gets corrupted for whatever reason (such as malware), the mirror will also be corrupted and everything could be lost.
I'm thinkin' what the OP is referring to is known as a clone. A cloned drive is an exact copy of the original drive that is, in the case of a boot drive, bootable. While a cloned drive is a reliable backup and can be the fastest way to restore a computer with a dead or corrupted drive, it does involve opening up the computer and swapping out drives. Not everyone wants to deal with that or is capable of it. Also, cloning usually can't be done on an external USB drive unless the drive can be removed from the housing so it can be swapped with the drive inside the computer (frequently, there are also compatibility issues. Docks are available that allow an internal HDD to be used as an external USB drive but one still would have to physically swap drives in case of a catatrophe. A cloned drive can be easily used to recover indivdual files, however, when it is on a USB drive or in a dock.
Better is what is known as an image. This basically a "picture" of your hardrive, often compressed so it takes up less room on a backup drive. This image can be used to rebuild the drive in your computer by using a recovery disk (usually a CD). Some imaging programs also allow you to recover single files from an image. An image is more versatile because you can both rebuild a corrupted drive or recover your system on a completely new drive.
The Macrium Reflact that CWatkinsNash is an excellent program for imaging a drive.