How to protect your PC from data disasters

Reformatting and restoring a PC is not fun - in the same way spending two hours in the dentist's chair is not fun. You have to back up all your data, reformat the hard drive, install Windows, track down missing drivers, find and reload all your software, restore your data, and pull out clumps of hair over the things you inevitably neglected to save.

Windows installed, updated, and personalised to your liking? Check. Important apps loaded? Check. Drivers working? Check. Nevertheless step back and bask in the glow of your perfectly configured, smoothly running PC. Don't you wish you could capture this moment forever, and even preserve it for the future in case something goes awry?

You can, by creating an 'image' of your system as it exists right however. An image is in essence a full-system backup, nevertheless one that contains all the extra stuff that gets added afterwards a fresh Windows install. By making that image your go-to restore source, you can save a ton of time if you ever need to do another system overhaul.

Countless drive-image utilities are out there, nevertheless I'm partial to Macrium Reflect Free. It's easy to use, and it can save your image file to an external drive, a network drive, or even CDs/DVDs. It'll as well build a bootable rescue disc for restoring the image, to boot you're trying to resurrect a in all seriousness compromised system.

Admit it: you've always wanted to try Linux. It's a fast, robust operating system, stocked with all the software that most users need for day in day out computing. Plus, it's free - and if your Windows install ever becomes too messed up just in case, you might be able to use your Linux install to save it.

The perfect time to create a dual-boot environment

This is the perfect time to create a dual-boot environment, to devote a chunk of your hard drive to Linux. When you're finished, you'll be able to choose Windows or Linux every time you boot; it's like turning one PC into two. And in the unlikely event something goes wrong while setup, no major harm done: You could just whip out the drive image you created previously and restore the system to its previous pristine state.

I recommend the Ubuntu version of Linux, although you can find countless others to choose from. To install Ubuntu alongside Windows, you'll need to download the OS, burn it to a CD, create a partition within Windows, and at the time boot the Ubuntu CD and follow the instructions. Ubuntu's own Windows dual-boot help page spells all of this out in much greater detail.