Back up software - Recommendations?

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Soldato
Joined
26 Jan 2005
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Good evening :)

I was wondering if anyone has experience of using any back up software besides Windows 7's own one?

It's just I tried using that one and it's incredibly slow, took like 3 days to back up my 1tb HD (has about 400gb used) and 80gb SD. It was literally going at the speed of a very slow download, about 40kb/s. Was this because I was backing up to an external drive though perhaps? Even then it should be faster than it was though surely?

Any nippy software out there otherwise? :(
 
What kind of backup do you want?

If it is just copying files from one place to another, use Robocopy. It is built into Windows 7 and is a really easy to use command line tool.

Basically:

robocopy C:\source D:\destination /s

You can put it in a batch file and use Scheduled Tasks to make it run whenever you want.

Alternatively, if you want an actual disk image, I recommend Macrium Reflect. There is a free version. It is very quick.

Taking 3 days for 400+GB is insanely slow. No idea why it would take that long.
 
SyncToy is great if you don't want to use the CLI. I don't think it is built on top of Robocopy, but has many of the same features.
 
Microsoft SyncToy is what I use to back up to an external USB hard drive. It's free to owners of genuine Windows OSes.

I also do a complete clone of my hard disk every so often using the free Acronis Western Digital cloning tools.
 
+1 for sync toy very reliable and quick love it backs up my music files with ease, just a shame you can get it to run as a task at certain times to save me worrying about forgetting to back it up :)

Xcopy built into windows is also good but it will only copy what you tell it to it does not really sync anything so to speak
 
liamcrane said:
+1 for sync toy very reliable and quick love it backs up my music files with ease, just a shame you can get it to run as a task at certain times to save me worrying about forgetting to back it up :)
Click to expand...

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2504...tomatically-with-task-scheduler-in-windows-7/

Will work with any version of Windows - not just 7.

Xcopy built into windows is also good but it will only copy what you tell it to it does not really sync anything so to speak
Click to expand...

Robocopy will sync if you use the /MIR option. Changes made to the source will be reflected in the destination.
 
SiriusB said:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2504...tomatically-with-task-scheduler-in-windows-7/

Will work with any version of Windows - not just 7.



Robocopy will sync if you use the /MIR option. Changes made to the source will be reflected in the destination.
Click to expand...

Sirus i didnt no that thanks for that, i quite enjoyedplaying around with a batch file but all i could get it to do with xcopy was "copy the new files" if i moved a file into a "new folder" and ran the batch file it would copy the new folder with the file in it but it would not delete the old one like sync toy does with the correct setting of course.

Could you explain how to do this with robocopy i have never used it before, is this freeware?

thanks a mill
 
Ok I'm also in this market been going 7 days now and still only at 35% on win7 back up (probably due to my powersaving setup) sleep mode after 20 mins of inactivity. (surprisingly sleep mode kicks in during downloading as well :shock: )

What I want is something to back up quicky MY documents folder, itunes, saved games and STEAM folders.
 
This is what I normally use for backing up files/folders:

Code: 
robocopy [I]<source directory>[/I] [I]<destination directory>[/I] /S

So, for example I regularly copy game saves to a second location using:

Code: 
robocopy "C:\Users\SiriusB\Documents\My Games" "\\Server\Backups\Game Saves" /S
The /S switch tells Robocopy to copy sub-folders too.

Another switch you can use is /MIR, and this is what you need if you wish to sync two folders. Any additions or deletions in the source will be added/deleted in the destination.

The great thing about Robocopy is that it will only copy new or changed files. So it wont copy everything in a folder if it is already at the destination. Robocopy is built into Vista and 7. But you can download it for XP. Just Google it.
 
Alternatively, if you want an actual disk image, I recommend Macrium Reflect. There is a free version. It is very quick.
Click to expand...

+1

I feel this is the best backup software out there, am very very impressed by its GUI design, speed & reliability. Even the free one is very powerful and its not crippled in anyway. Its just missing differential and incremental backup functions (which you get in paid version). But this does not matter to me because its SO FAST in creating images!!
 
It matters if you do daily backups, like I do! Having a whole new 40GB image because 100mb of data changed is a little wasteful. :p

The Full version also has encryption, which is handy for me since I keep one set of backups on a USB HDD.

It is a very nice program. Each new version comes with loads of tweaks and improvements too. One thing I would like to see is the ability to exclude the contents of certain files/folders from the image. [No point imaging the temp directories for example!].
 
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