So how does "One-Touch-Backup" work?

[AirForceElite]

I have asked this type of question before (but it had different question)

Anyways, right now, the way I back up my data is:

Have 2 hard drives in my rig.
80GB HDD for OS+everything else
40GB HDD for back up

The way I do it, is approximately every month (or whenever I upload important pictures from my camera) I delete my data on back up drive, and immediately drag-and-drop the current "My Documents" folder.

What i want to know is...how does this one push back up work?
I know you can specify which files/folders are to get backed up...but what i want to know spefificly is how does it do it?

For the sake of simplicity, lets say 1 have 1 picture that needs to be backed up.

I push the button, and it backs up that 1 picture. Day later, I do some photoshopping to the picture, and press the button again. Does it delete the old one and copy the new photoshopped version?
Or another scenario. I copy the picture, and then day later, i re-name it and back it up again. Will the backup drive now have 2 pictures (which are essentially identical) or will it detect that the picture is same, just the name is different, and just automaticly re-name it?

The reason why i am asking is because i do a lot of "file managing" What i mean by that is that i constantly, delete, modify, delete, change, rename pictures/files/vidoes all the time. With that in mind, before i buy these back up drives, I want to know how it will handle the changes that i do because it is important for me.

 

[MichaelD]

It depends on the software that the backup drive has installed. Honestly, most are crap and you overpay for the drive/enclosure/software.

My recommendation is to do this:

Either:

a: Get an external USB HD in an enclosure (build your own, much cheaper!) and manually back up whenever you need to.

or

b. Install another internal drive and schedule backups of your important folders with NTBACKUP. NTBACKUP is built into Windows 2000 and Windows XP. (Start/Run type NTBACKUP)

or

c. Manually burn backups of whatever you need to a CDRW or DVDRW.

At home, I do both A and C. At work I use the B option, writing to a tape drive and to a RAID 5 array.

 

[AirForceElite]

thank you MichaelD

However I was asking for something slightly different.
When these one push back up software get installed on the drive, and you want to back up, how exatly does it back up?

Does it over-write old with current data?
Or does it check for identical file names and only backs up something that needs to back up (such as files created after last back up)
Or does it look into properties of the file...say an .mp3 or .jpg and tries to see if there is a same file like that already...and if there is, it doesnt back up.

 

[Tuckie]

I know that our western digital one touch, it uses retrospect backup, and it all simply depends on how you configure the software.

 

[RebateMonger]

You're probably not going to get what you want with the default "One-touch" backup. You need to manually configure your backups to either:

a) Give you multiple separate backups on the hard drive

or

b) To give you what Microsoft's NTBackup refers to as either "Differential" or Incremental" backups. These will keep ongoing backups which don't overwrite the older versions of files.

I always recommend that users FULLY understand how their backup software works. That'll require some reading.

 

[idiotekniQues]

use xp sync toy. its free and it is a great little tool to back up stuff the way you want it.

i routinely keep 40 gigs of music & data plus another 120gb of digital photos backed up without having to rewrite every file.