lifehacker.com — Don’t expect yourself to remember to back up your data, or stack your closet full of burned CD’s or DVD’s. Today we’re going to set up automated nightly, weekly, monthly local and off-site backups for your PC using free software. Once you get this up and running, you’ll never have to worry about losing data again.
Feb 3, 2006 View in Crawl 4
jamescarlosFeb 3, 2006
i read this a few weeks ago, good article...but can SyncBack Freeware back up multiple directories under 1 profile? If so how?
raccetturaFeb 3, 2006
No dig... silly article.Aconis and an external HD are better (I got a 300GB seagate for $99 after rebate, and a $50 external case from newegg).Acronis makes an IMAGE in minutes. Images are better because no re-installing on restore. You get your old computer back, settings and all.IMHO for < $200, well worth it. With a 300GB drive, i have multiple images, so I can revert 3-4 weeks if I wanted to.THAT is the correct way of backing up. It saves a lot of time.
roosterFeb 3, 2006
I've been using SyncBack for a few years now. It's fantastic for freeware. I use it to backup my hard drive every night, and also to sync my music library to my work laptop.
exickFeb 3, 2006
"So I can back up my entire TV collection at a bit rate of ~1.8GB per hour?"Try your math again. Firewire is 400Mbps which is about 175GB per hour."THAT is the correct way of backing up. It saves a lot of time."This is for backing up data only, not an entire system. Creating a disk image for a few gigs or even a few hundred gigs is overkill.
diggdFeb 18, 2006
Great concept, been doing this for years using a program called Second Copy 2000. I used to use my network and backup computer 1 data to computer 2 etc, so if you lose a hard drive another computer on the network has the data. I have my profiles auto run every night and only data from that day gets copied. I keep one version of deleted files in case something accidently gets deleted. I only backup important data. As some have pointed out this is not an imaging backup like ghost or acronis, this is for live data backups. Easy to rebuild with an unattended xp install so I do not waste space on backing up my system. The reason I like this article is it goes the next step and suggests an external hard drive. The reason this is better than RAID and better than just copying across your network is you still have a backup if your house gets hit by a huge electric surge or lightning. I was always woried about a blow out where I lost both computers, thus all data is gone. The other benefit is you can quickly grab it if a fire breaks, something you RAID and internal hard drive users cannot do easily. Great story!Dennis
softwareforallJul 13, 2009
Paragon Drive Backup Free edition user is here. Free and you can create an exact image of your HDD fast. Several days ago I’ve got an email from Paragon, that they are offering automatic backup solution for free, you can find it here: <a class="user" href="http://www.paragon-software.com/home/systembackup/">http://www.paragon-software.com/home/systembackup/</a>Hope it helps.