File backup utility....boring

[Chrisb]

I have been caught a few times without a backup and have lost loads of painting through a crashing HD (two in quick succession once). Its not a thing of the past so beware.
I may be years out of date here but after looking around for a trusty 'simple' backup utility with the ability to tailor my needs but not backing up a whole drive or 'system' I found a free one by Microsoft called 'SyncToy' on their site.

The beauty of it is that it is 'simple'. You choose what drive, folder, file, or even down to an individual photo, you wish to backup. It can make a copy, incremental or differential backup. I have chosen all of my painting folders, and once the initial copy has been made, it copies all the changed files over at a click and in very few seconds. I copy daily on auto but manually whenever I have done some alterations.

Chris

[btaylo24]

I used Synctoy for a number of years, but found a few times it missed objects and got "confused"

Now use http://allwaysync.com/ and blows Synctoy out the water..can do all sorts of permutations and great product.

Synctoy is basic and ad hoc...

[Chrisb]

Thanks Barry, I'll try that one then. I did wonder how old it was. They will get men in flying machines next!

Chris

[KevinJarvis]

Backup utilities always took too long for me. I just burn all my files onto a CD.

[jetmax]

Backup utilities always took too long for me. I just burn all my files onto a CD.

CDs... that is so retro

[petebramley]

QNAP 459 NAS
WITH 4 X 2TB drives

I now backup at least once a month and its so much easier.

Had a sort out in my attic and found my old backup media:

Anybody want 450+ 3.5 floppys

[flyboy]

Same here

DNS-321 NAS
2X1TB (Raid 1)

I use Vice Versa as my backup utility. Very fast, can backup a file to a drive with little effort.

http://www.tgrmn.com/

My flight sim is around 350,000 files so putting it on CDs would be a pain. I run Vice once a week at least, it not more often.

A good backup system is well worth the cost and effort. I learned the hard way too.