Best way to keep a constant backup.

[awb23]

I need to have constant backup of my data.

Scenerio:

I work mostly on my laptop.

I also have 2 500gig drives in mirror raid on my desktop.

Every night I want to easily transfer the data on my laptop to a partition set up on my desktop for backup.

Once a week I want to backup the desktop partition onto an external hardrive.

So I will essentially have 2 backups of my laptop constantly. One that's always about 24 hours old...and one that's about 1 week old.

My question is how do i do this easily, conveniently, and quickly?

What program do I use and what wires do I need to do the transfer etc etc?

I'm fairly computer literate, however I've never worked with a backup system such as this.

Any info or ideas are much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[JAG87]

i really like synctoy from MS

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/usin...gitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

its plain and easy for backing stuff up to my external.

 

[stogez]

Acronis True Image is good for all your backup needs
Just backup from the laptop to the desktop over your network. Depending on how much you need to backup, use either wired or wireless.
From the desktop just set it up to backup your laptop partition to the external drive on a weekly basis.

 

[maverick2604]

if speed is an issue you could look into incrimental backups... where once you do a full backup, the next backup will only backup the files that have been changed/edited or added. hence making the whole process faster.

 

[Zepper]

AutoSave 2 The best price Froogle gets is $45.00 at TigerDirect. Or you can get it in this package Which is basically a combo of SystemSuite 7, Network Magic, and AutoSave 2.

If you decide you might want to try SystemCare, I can connect you with an offer to get it by download for $50. - totally legit as it is direct from Avanquest/VCom'S online store. It's nice that they give you 5 seats of the product at the same price...

.bh.

 

[awb23]

how do i do incrimental backups? does that come with acronis?

 

[darren1394]

XP pro has built in Backup, for XP home it has to be installed off CD.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx

Its FREE, easy, and can do scheduled backups of laptop to PC, PC to external. etc.
It also has incremental backup, so it only backs up new files or changed files.

 

[awb23]

I have Vista Home Premium....not xp pro =/

 

[mc866]

Acronis true image 10 is the way to go. You can setup all those tasks to run automatically overnight or whenever it is convenient for you. It isn't the cheapest option but is a great backup solution.

 

[darren1394]

Vista also has the same type of built in backup...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc...dowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx

 

[stogez]

If you just need simple backups you could just use the built in backup utility. Acronis or other backup programs just provide more options such as backing up an entire drive to a new one and resizing partitions and such. Take a look at the products suggested and see if you need the extra features.

 

[Zepper]

EMC Retrospect Express HD is one of the better backup softwares. It is the same as the full Retrospect in terms of the types of backups it can do (Full, Incremental, etc.) the only limit is the type of backup media you can use.
. It can backup to anything that has a drive letter but whatever it is it has to have the room to hold all of them - IOW pretty much limited to hard disks. If you want to backup to tape etc. the full Retrospect can do that.
. Find out what happens to an Acronis TrueImage backup file if it becomes corrupted? Used to be with image backups you would lose everything in the file past the corruption as a minimum and with some imaging programs, you'd lose all the data in the file. With File-by-file backup software you only lose the file(s) that is(are) corrupt.
. Any backup software you get should be capable of restoring from a catastrophic failure - meaning the original hard drive has become inaccessable, inoperable, stolen, etc.

NovaBackup is another excellent FbF backup program - novastor.com.

.bh.

 

[abc]

so emc retro makes file to file copies instead of a proprietary 'image'?

so if you backup a 60gb drive in 'file to file' form then your backup drive needs 60gb of space? essentially it's just doing a big file copy from source to destination drive?