The philosophy behind Ars’ publishing of their system rescue guide is … “Never ask “should I be paranoid about losing my data?” Ask “just how paranoid should I be about losing my data?”

They run through a list of open source measures from Clonezilla which will allow you to clone an existing system installation to the variety of Linux boot disks that are available.  When you buy a boutique PC or a laptop then you have a system restore disk which the company provided but that will take it back to the state you purchased it in.  Windows System Recovery disks also often ended up causing file and program loss.  There are alternatives out there, ones that only require the investment of time and maybe a blank DVD, so read through the article before investing in an expensive back up solution.


“Technology is wonderful, until it stops working as expected. Computers have a nasty habit of developing glitches or just going belly up altogether at the worst possible times. There’s nothing that can prevent that, but a couple of open source tools can help mitigate disaster and maybe even save the day altogether. With Clonezilla you can create a perfect copy of your system. Using the System Rescue CD, you’ll have all the tools you need to recover from many system crashes.”

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