04. EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation 3.0
Probably one of the most disastrous things to strike your PC is a
hard drive crash. One minute you are hard at work and the next your PC
has stopped responding. It is at this point that the first thing you do
is panic. It is also at times like this that you hear a voice in your
inner most consciousness saying ‘I told you that you should have backed
up your system.’
Strangely, this is an all too familiar scenario. Everyone thinks they
are infallible when it comes to the dreaded hard disk crash; sadly,
though, this is not the case; there are none of us safe from a system
crash. However, we can do something to make life easier should a system
crash occur and that is to backup or clone our hard drive and, frankly,
there is no better way of doing this than by using EaseUS Todo Backup
Workstation.
One Click Backup
EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation has a clean tabbed user interface
enabling the user to see at a glance exactly what the application does.
The interface is divided into five main tabbed divisions; Home, Backup,
Recovery, Snapshot, and Tools with the GUI defaulting to the Home tab.
The Home tab contains the most obvious backup options for system,
file and cloning the hard drive. Each option is a simple one click operation and
you are guided through each sequence by a set of intuitive screens. You
also have the option, either from the backup window or once a backup has
been created, for EaseUS Todo to check the backup’s integrity just in
case any problems occurred during the initial backup process. This is a
useful feature and should be used at all time to ensure that all backups
are safe.
Fig: 4-1 The Home page contains most of the backup options you will
require
Recovery
Recovering backup images is just as easy as creating them. Once the
relevant file is selected your machine powers down and then opens in a
pre-windows environment where all of the recovery steps are executed.
Interestingly EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation’s recovery contains an
option to recover backups to dissimilar hardware thus enabling the user
to recover an imaged backup to an alternative drive or alternative PC
without the usual hassle of actually having to re-install the whole
operating system.
Fig: 4-2 Select the backup you want to recover and then click the
Next button
Enable PreOS
While it is a simple matter to create an EaseUS Todo Backup
Workstation recovery CD it is also possible to add a link to the pre
windows environment to the boot record of your computer. To do this you
simple click on the Tools tab and then click the Enable PreOS option.
The next time you boot your computer a menu will appear asking if you
wish to boot into Windows or the EaseUS PreOS environment. This option
is similar and quicker than actually relying upon a recovery CD.
However, it should be stressed that enabling the PreOS option doesn’t
guarantee complete safety from backup disaster. It should be remembered
that, should your PC’s hard drive crash, you may not have access to the
PreOS environment, thus you will be unable to recover any backup that
you have made. For this reason always ensure that, as well as enabling
the PreOS option, you also create an EaseUS Todo Backup recovery CD.
Fig: 4-3 The EaseUS Todo Backup Windows Pre-environment link added to
the Boot Manager
Snapshot
A snapshot is the state of your system at a particular time. In
effect it is very similar to Windows’ own System Restore allowing you to
install software onto your system and, should the software become
troublesome, simply revert back to your PC’s original state.
Convert
There is a lot talked about virtual machines nowadays and, to be
honest, VM’s are a God send when it comes to trying out new operating
systems in what is technically called a sandbox situation. EaseUS Todo
Backup Workstation can help create a VM disk by allowing you to convert
an imaged drive or partition into VMDK/VHD file format.
Fig: 4-4 Converting a backup image to a Virtual machine is a
straightforward task
While the conversion to VMDK/VHD is pretty straightforward we
actually found it quite disappointing. It is not, for instance,
documented that, if you are using VMware Workstation or VMPlayer you
must install the
VMware Virtual Development Kit
prior to attempting to convert a backup. Also once the conversion has
been completed it is not a simple matter to load the VM into VMware
Workstation or VMPlayer. Instead, in our case, we had to physically
create a new virtual machine and then, during the creation process,
direct the new VM to use the converted VMDK file as the guest operating
system. Unfortunately when we attempted to use the converted backup file
as a VM all we managed to get was a blue screen of death.
Verdict
When it comes to backing up or cloning your hard drive you really do
need an application that you can trust. While there are numerous backup
applications available not all perform as they should do and there is
nothing worse than creating a backup/image only to find that when you
need it, it fails to perform as it should.
The de-facto backup/cloning application is probably Acronis True
Image. In fact we ourselves have been regular users of Acronis. However,
we must admit that since using EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation on a
regular basis our option has somewhat changed.
We found EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation an excellent backup/cloning
application. It is capable of creating standard, differential and
incremental backups at the touch of a button and is both easy to use
and, more importantly, user friendly. We highly recommend EaseUS for
backing up your valuable files and disk drives. In our opinion it is
time for Acronis to step aside and make way for EaseUS Todo Backup
Workstation.
- Ease Of Use: 9
- Features: 9
- Value For Money: 9
- Overall: 9