Chris Wilson Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 Had a very near miss with several years worth of photos and documents which only got backed up about 2 years ago. A power cut in the local area left the PC off for a few hours. I have kept it permanently on for aout 6 years, it only goes off if there's a power failure or I need to turn the mains off. Anyway, it wouldn't re boot and I used another very old PC and Magic Bridge hardware to check each of the 4 drives, two being IDE and 2 being SATA. One SATA and one IDE were dead. I even had some pics of my late mother, the only recent pics of here in existence, so I was pretty uset... Anyway, after having a sleep on it I decided that the main thing that had happened were the drives were now cold. I put the SATA one in the oven and very slowly brought it up to a comfortable hands on heat. *u((er me, the thing started working, so I have spent the last days backing stuff up tp about 20 DVD's. I have tried the same stunt with the IDE drive, and that too is now working, so I am backing up stuff of lesser importance. I need to have a proper back up regime and am thinking of a big exteral E SATA hard drive. Is there any good cheap / free back up software? I am not woried about the OS, just eed to back up photos, documents and e-mail. My e-mail app (The Bat!) has it's own automated back up setting, but stupidly I backed up to the same drive the software itself resided on, so nearly lost 4 years of e-mail stuff, too. So basically I need to back up specified folders either nightly or as I add data. What do you experts recommend? Needs to be simple and idiot proof Thanks. I am currently working off my laptop! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexM Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 I use syncback, there's a free version with scheduling - should do everything you need and more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 How much data are you talking about. Options could be as simple as writing a dvd once a week, or using an external harddrive which you use once a week. Windows has it's own backup, which isn't brilliant but is included. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrRalphMan Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 You could try Microsoft's Powertoy. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en It's meant to be pretty good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 You could try Microsoft's Powertoy. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en It's meant to be pretty good. I use that sync up my NAS units it is very good, the only catch with that is it will not keep different copies of a file, but not sure what Chris's requirements are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Branners Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 I use 2 Seagate portable hard drives. They have software on them that allows you to do a continual backup of any folders or files you choose so first time out it does a full backup, and then just the changes and new files after that. I use 2 drives so that one is always at my parents place and the other is plugged in to the machine. If your house burns down or somebody nicks your computer you lose the backup drive and all trace of the data, so I make sure I swap the drives over on a regular basis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 As you suggest, an external Hard drive or two is ideal. These Western Digital drives include automated backup software. Maxtor/Seagate do the OneTouch jobbies which are similar. Are you STILL running Win2k? That may restrict your software options. The Western Digis say they'll work with 2k...oh, and we usually stock them I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrRalphMan Posted August 3, 2009 Share Posted August 3, 2009 Nice, then you can spank Chris's card again... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 Yesterday -- The Backup Song Yesterday, All those backups seemed a waste of pay. Now my database has gone away. Oh I believe in yesterday. Suddenly, There's not half the files there used to be, And there's a milestone hanging over me The system crashed so suddenly. I pushed something wrong What it was I could not say. Now all my data's gone and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay. Yesterday, The need for back-ups seemed so far away. I knew my data was all here to stay, Now I believe in yesterday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 That's great. I think we could use that in a mailshot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VIL Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 We work with a few companies that say CrashPlan is the best thing out there a the moment and for Home Users its FREE!!! For more go to http://www4.crashplan.com/landing/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted August 4, 2009 Author Share Posted August 4, 2009 I am slowly getting things back together again, thanks for the ideas, I'll look at these and see which I am most comfortable with, cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkR Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 Chris, get yourself a drive that uses RAID. Not sure if you know what that is, but basically if you have 2 x 500GB drives, they are set up in a mirror. What ever you write to the first disk gets written to the 2nd disk. The downside is you only get 500GB from the 2 drives, but if one drive fails, the remaining drive keeps working, you buy another disk to replace the failed disk, pop it in, and the device re-writes the data to the 2nd disk and you once again have peace of mind resiliency. Backups achieve the same thing but there are manual steps involved. Backups are only better if you have a fire and the backups were kept offsite or in a fireproof safe. This is an example of what I mean http://reviews.cnet.com/hard-drives/maxtor-onetouch-iii-turbo/4505-3186_7-31593898.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 Veritas FTW (symantec now ) Wont be what you will want to spend on one though.... ntbackup as its already there is your best bet imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bodilx6 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Have you thought about some online backup solution? This would also save you in case of theft or fire. They are getting quite good and cheap. Several have no space limitations as well /Stefan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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