A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's structure and data typically stored in one or more computer files on another storage device.
In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", whereas the noun and adjective form is "backup". Backups can be used to recover data after its loss from data deletion or corruption, or to recover data from an earlier time. Backups provide a simple form of disaster recovery; however not all backup systems are able to reconstitute a computer system or other complex configuration such as a computer cluster, active directory server, or database server.
Disk cloning is the process of duplicating all data on a digital storage drive, such as a hard disk or solid state drive, using hardware or software techniques. Unlike file copying, disk cloning also duplicates the filesystems, partitions, drive meta data and slack space on the drive. Common reasons for cloning a drive include; data backup and recovery; duplicating a computer's configuration for mass deployment and for preserving data for digital forensics purposes. Drive cloning can be used in conjunction with drive imaging where the cloned data is saved to one or more files on another drive rather than copied directly to another drive.
GHOST, now Symantec™ GHOST Solution Suite (GSS) for enterprise, is a disk cloning and backup tool originally developed by Murray Haszard in 1995 for Binary Research. The technology was acquired in 1998 by Symantec.
Acronis International GmbH, simply referred to as Acronis, is a Swiss technology company with its corporate headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. Acronis develops on-premises and cloud software which integrate backup, disaster recovery, cybersecurity, and endpoint management. Acronis has 15 offices worldwide. Its R&D centers, Acronis Labs, are based in Bulgaria, the United States, Italy, Serbia and Singapore. Acronis has 54 cloud data centers around the world, including the United States, France, Singapore, Japan, and Germany.
In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).
Continuous data protection (CDP), also called continuous backup or real-time backup, refers to backup of computer data by automatically saving a copy of every change made to that data, essentially capturing every version of the data that the user saves. In its true form it allows the user or administrator to restore data to any point in time. The technique was patented by British entrepreneur Pete Malcolm in 1989 as "a backup system in which a copy [editor's emphasis] of every change made to a storage medium is recorded as the change occurs [editor's emphasis]."
Veritas Backup Exec is a data protection software product designed for customers with mixed physical and virtual environments, and who are moving to public cloud services. Supported platforms include VMware and Hyper-V virtualization, Windows and Linux operating systems, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage, among others. All management and configuration operations are performed with a single user interface. Backup Exec also provides integrated deduplication, replication, and disaster recovery capabilities and helps to manage multiple backup servers or multi-drive tape loaders.
The terms Recovery disc, Rescue Disk/Disc and Emergency Disk all refer to a capability to boot from an external device, possibly a thumb drive, that includes a self-running operating system: the ability to be a boot disk/Disc that runs independent of an internal hard drive that may be failing, or for some other reason is not the operating system to be run.
Windows Home Server is a home server operating system from Microsoft. It was announced on 7 January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates, released to manufacturing on 16 July 2007 and officially released on 4 November 2007.
NTBackup is the first built-in backup utility of the Windows NT family. It was introduced with Windows NT 3.51. NTBackup comprises a GUI (wizard-style) and a command-line utility to create, customize, and manage backups. It takes advantage of Shadow Copy and Task Scheduler. NTBackup stores backups in the BKF file format on external sources, e.g., floppy disks, hard drives, tape drives, and Zip drives. When used with tape drives, NTBackup uses the Microsoft Tape Format (MTF), which is also used by BackupAssist, Backup Exec, and Veeam Backup & Replication and is compatible with BKF.
Acronis Secure Zone is a hard disk partition type created and used by Acronis True Image as a backup storage target.
Backup and Restore is the primary backup component of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can create file and folder backups, as well as system images backups, to be used for recovery in the event of data corruption, hard disk drive failure, or malware infection. It replaces NTBackup, which has been part of Windows since Windows NT 3.51. Unlike its predecessor, it supports CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays discs as backup media.
VHD and its successor VHDX are file formats representing a virtual hard disk drive (HDD). They may contain what is found on a physical HDD, such as disk partitions and a file system, which in turn can contain files and folders. They are typically used as the hard disk of a virtual machine, are built into modern versions of Windows, and are the native file format for Microsoft's hypervisor, Hyper-V.
Disk cloning software facilitates a disk cloning operation by using software techniques to copy data from a source to a destination drive or to a disk image.
The subject of computer backups is rife with jargon and highly specialized terminology. This page is a glossary of backup terms that aims to clarify the meaning of such jargon and terminology.
Clonezilla is an open-source suite of disk cloning, disk imaging and system deployment utilities. Clonezilla Server Edition uses multicast technologies to deploy a single image file to a group of computers on a local area network. Clonezilla was designed by Steven Shiau and developed by the NCHC Free Software Labs in Taiwan.
This is a comparison of online backup services.
Macrium Reflect is a backup utility for Microsoft Windows developed by Paramount Software UK Ltd in 2006. It creates disk images and file backup archives using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to ensure 'point in time' data accuracy. Macrium Reflect can back up whole partitions or individual files and folders into a single compressed, mountable archive file, which can be used to restore exact images of the partitions on the same hard disk for disaster recovery, or a new hard disk for data migration.
MSP360, formerly CloudBerry Lab, is a software and application service provider company that develops online backup, remote desktop and file management products integrated with more than 20 cloud storage providers.
