Backup question

[DLI]

Hiya

Got my machine running again after it had a small Now thanks to all the advice on this site have ditched Norton and gone with AVG, Zone Alarm and Spybot and for some unknow reason everything seems to run MUCH faster.

So, what I would really like to know now from you kind folk is whether there's a good (ideally free!) backup program out there? I've two internal HDs - primary drive is a 500 with another 300 drive just sitting there waiting to take backup copies of all my files. Any suggestions please ....


Cheers

David

 

[Mav]

Personally, I just organise all my documents under one directory and then every month, take a copy of that directory on to my back up hard drive. No software required and very easy to retrieve the back up, even on another machine

One other point - I use an external drive - pretty cheap for a good size and very portable.

 

[Monsieur]

Personally, I just organise all my documents under one directory and then every month, take a copy of that directory on to my back up hard drive. No software required and very easy to retrieve the back up, even on another machine

One other point - I use an external drive - pretty cheap for a good size and very portable.

Sorry - excuse my ignorance...
how do you create a directory and, when one has been created, organise all documents on it to store on the external disc?

 

[Yoda]

Personally, I just organise all my documents under one directory and then every month, take a copy of that directory on to my back up hard drive. No software required and very easy to retrieve the back up, even on another machine

One other point - I use an external drive - pretty cheap for a good size and very portable.

+1 on the above.

Each of the PC's (one each for self, Mrs Yoda and the two Yoderettes) has a "personal directory".

Once a week I set off a copy routine to load the personal directories off each machine onto a cyclical series of folders on a spare drive lurking within the fastest machine.

And once a month I copy the latest of these folders to an external USB hard-drive that's normally kept off-site.

This process has worked well as I've had to recover two subsets over the past 12 months. Firstly when the laddo's machine threw a memory/motherboard error into the works and corrupted the HDD, and the second time when the daughter's HDD went down.

 

[Mav]

Sorry - excuse my ignorance...
how do you create a directory and, when one has been created, organise all documents on it store on the external disc?

A directory is simply a folder in Windows Explorer. So, open Windows Explorer, navigate to your hard-drive, probably called C:\ From here you can right-click in the righ-hand window and select: New... Folder. Call it something like 'Documents' and drag all the documents (including pics etc) you care about in to that folder. IMO I would not bother trying to back up software so this folder should only be for docs. When ever you create a new document or save a new document, put it somewhere under that folder. Then to make a back-up, simply take a copy of that top folder and paste it into your back-up hard drive.

Hope that makes sense and wasn't too patronising...

Mav

 

[jimbo]

Some of these solution will save the data, but if you loose the whole disc there will still be other things lost.
- email (where do you put your email files)
- Favourites
- applications and their settings.

Betware if you spill coffee on your PC (or whatever) you may kills both HDs, really you want a separate data backup - ideally off site. My father has a stack of DVDs, so at least most of my data is secure.

 

[jimbo]

Hi-Jack!
if anybody knows a good free backup programme that copies to multiple DVDs, I'd be intested - LAst time I did it the hard way with dragging and dropping via explorer.

 

[Mav]

Some of these solution will save the data, but if you loose the whole disc there will still be other things lost.
- email (where do you put your email files)
- Favourites
- applications and their settings.

Good point.

Favourites and application settings are pretty tedious to back up... but email is a little easier if you are using Outlook. Outlook stores everything (Mail, contacts, calendar etc) in a PST or OST file. You can choose to have this stored in your documents directory that gets included in the back up. To restore on a new machine, simple open Outlook and choose File, Open, Outlook Data file and voila - your email etc is back

 

[shugie]

Not really an answer to the original question, but if you want to backup easily without needing DVDs etc, the BT Digital Vault service is a useful option. It is an online backup that stores files on a secure server somewhere secret. I've been using it for a while, and it does what it says on the tin.

 

[bustupbiker]

Hiya

Got my machine running again after it had a small Now thanks to all the advice on this site have ditched Norton and gone with AVG, Zone Alarm and Spybot and for some unknow reason everything seems to run MUCH faster.

So, what I would really like to know now from you kind folk is whether there's a good (ideally free!) backup program out there? I've two internal HDs - primary drive is a 500 with another 300 drive just sitting there waiting to take backup copies of all my files. Any suggestions please ....


Cheers

David

You could always try here for something that may do the job..
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/

 

[bustupbiker]

You could always clone the drive with Norton Ghost or Acronis trueimage
that way you have the OS too... I'm sure they will be available

 

[Monsieur]

Hope that makes sense and wasn't too patronising...Mav

Not at all - thanks

 

[cookie]

You could always clone the drive with Norton Ghost or Acronis trueimage
that way you have the OS too... I'm sure they will be available

best advice here IMO.

acronis is not free, but can be had for less than £20 (a lot less on bittorrent ).

 

[bustupbiker]

Scanned the PC mags in the paper shop this morning and the Windoz XP mag has Acronis 8 on the FREE disc. BUT the mag is 6quid but cheap for a
legal copy of Acronis...