Help with Backups please

[pete.rush]

Just had one of my Seagate portable drives fail on me (FreeAgent Go), tried all the different solutions, but just can't access the drive, so backed up the data on my second drive which all seem to work, all the data's there, but the Seagate software said backup failed and every time tried to repeat it, the software said backup failed.

The good thing is all the data's on the drive, but I've completely lost all faith in the software which I've removed from the computer and looking for a solution.

I'm thinking of formatting the 2nd drive (and buying another), and starting from scratch, using other sync software, heard good things about synctoy, is it any good and any recommendations for a new portable drive

Still using Window XP and the backup mainly photo's and music.

 

[PhotoMonty]

Try Robocopy - a free file copying programme from Microsoft. It takes a bit of fiddling with to understand the various switches you need to use, but it's fast and effective at backing up as it simply copies everything across to the backup drive. This means you can simply create a copy of your files and folder structure on the backup drive.

It won't sync the data as you use and change it, but you can trigger the backup yourself or run it as a scheduled task. It only copies across any files which have changed, so after the initial backup it is very quick.

Microsoft info is at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145%28WS.10%29.aspx

Download it (and many other tools) from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17657

 

[neil_g]

Allway sync will trigger on modified, it is free to a certain amount of data

 

[RobertP]

I only do manual backups from my PC, and for that I use synctoy.

I backup to one drive of a PC with 2 large drives in it. The other drive is not shared and has a copy of the share. That copy is maintained automatically by a free program called pure sync. It works fine and could do what you need but takes a while getting your head round all the options!

 

[pete.rush]

Thanks for the comments, further research has highlighted that synctoy rather slow when dealing with large amounts of data, is that true?

 

[RobertP]

Doesn't seem any slower than copy and paste when transferring data.

What does delay things is the initial comparison where it checks to find out what needs copying. Better letting it check what's new rather than me trying to remember what has been added since last backup. Other big advantage over copy and paste is if it gets interrupted you don't need to know what was copied and what wasn't.