White Papers & Tutorials

DVD Backup Made Easy

If you are running backups on a regular basis, you have probably come across the problem that CD-Rs or CD-RWs are simply too 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 10 GB of data. The solution to this problem is to use DVD-Rs or DVD-RWs instead. Since a DVD can easily store as many as 7 CDs, you could back up 5 to 10 GB 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 DVD-R can usually store 4.7 GB of data; and with compression you should be able to store about 10 GB on a single DVD. If you have ever tried to compress a 10 GB file, you probably know that this will take a lot of time. If you have a 20 GB hard drive 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 hard drive, 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 yous save a backup to DVD.

Integrated DVD Writing
Even though many PC owners have a DVD writer installed on their computer, surprisingly few use it to back up important data. One reason for this could be that many users feel that writing to DVD is a little complicated. With WinBackup, this is no longer true. WinBackup has an integrated CD/DVD writing feature that 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 Run Backup. You can even leave a DVD-RW 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.

Click Here to Backup to DVD with WinBackup 2.0