Backup software to external hard drives

[jaylim0512]

Could someone recommend me a good software to back up my harddrive automatically?

 

[Emulex]

norton ghost 15 or the business version BESR 2010 is the best.

acronis is close but for business it wasn't as stable.

 

[Elixer]

norton ghost 15 or the business version BESR 2010 is the best.

acronis is close but for business it wasn't as stable.

Is norton ghost 15 still based on Drive Image ?
The original ghost was the best at this stuff, but that is long out of date now.

OP, what kind of backups are you looking to make, complete images, or incremental?
Do you want custom format, or something using zip/7z to do the archiving ?
Is the data sensitive ?
Do you need encrypting ?

 

[FishAk]

I've tried all the free backup programs, and each one had one issue or another, They simply were not reliable around a year ago.

GoodSync is an excellent backup program with a free trial. It analyses your proposed backup, clearly tells you what will happen, and clearly lets you know if any problems occurred during the backup job. It synchronizes across networks, or locally, and one license will handle multiple computers if they are networked.

Encryption is a non-issue for me, since I use TrueCrypt which encrypts/decrypts on the fly. The backup program isn't aware that it's working with encrypted data, because plain text is fed to it from the encrypted containers.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I use Crashplan, that works pretty well.

 

[mrblotto]

I've used Ghost, DriveImage, and am currently using Acronis v11 at work for system images. At home I use the built in Windows Backup (although I havent had to use it yet so cant comment on how restoring data is).

I use the manual drag and drop method for my work computer to a separate HD. I just feel better having the files stay the way they are rather than getting lumped into one huge data file (.gho, .pqi, .tbi).

 

[msbytes]

Crashplan works great. You may also want to try Microsoft Synctoy, add it to task scheduler to make it automated. 3rd I've used is Cobain,but I haven't used it for a number of years

 

[FishAk]

I can vouch for Synctoy being unreliable and slow.

 

[Emulex]

ghost/besr is super reliable.

 

[kmmatney]

Just use the free versions of Acronis that are available with Seagate or WD drives. I've never had any problems with them - hopefully you have a Seagate or Western Digital drive somewhere on your system - that's all you need.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

I've been happy with Cobian Backup, I also use SyncBack which works perfectly for me.

 

[jaylim0512]

what is the difference between a sync software and a backup software?