backing up data question

Cheekykid · 28 Dec 2009 at 20:36

I have backed up on a external hard drive 500GB of data however this data i wish to refresh with new content.
My problem that makes it very time consuming is how do I know, or remember to be more accurate, which folders on my pc disk have the new data i wish to pass over to the "old" data contained in the external hard disk so that I won't have to click 1000 times the box window "do you wish to rewrite these files". Basically i want to know how to copy over ONLY the new data but of course not manually because 1)it will take a long time 2) i cant remember which is old and which is new.

jbloggs · 28 Dec 2009 at 20:42

Synctoy 2

SyncBack Freeware

Aod · 28 Dec 2009 at 23:20

As jbloggs said, almost all decent backup software ought to have a faacility for tracking filechanges and only backing up new data.

Cheekykid · 28 Dec 2009 at 23:30

Aod said:
As jbloggs said, almost all decent backup software ought to have a faacility for tracking filechanges and only backing up new data.

Many thanks. As much as it sounds dumb I never thought before of this solution

rctneil · 28 Dec 2009 at 23:35

Use FreeFileSync, best app I have found for this and is very reliable and fast!

Jimmy1983 · 28 Dec 2009 at 23:47

jbloggs said:
Synctoy 2

This for me

rctneil · 28 Dec 2009 at 23:53

I can't remember what it is but I do remember reading that SyncToy 2 has a flaw in it and doesn't actually work as it should. Just a small bug whcih is why I found FreeFileSync and it's great!

Jimmy1983 · 29 Dec 2009 at 00:08

rctneil said:
I can't remember what it is but I do remember reading that SyncToy 2 has a flaw in it and doesn't actually work as it should. Just a small bug whcih is why I found FreeFileSync and it's great!

Scheduled backup's maybe?

CaptainCrash · 29 Dec 2009 at 00:14

rctneil said:
I can't remember what it is but I do remember reading that SyncToy 2 has a flaw in it and doesn't actually work as it should. Just a small bug whcih is why I found FreeFileSync and it's great!

IIRC there was a bug involving timestamps which messed up incremental backups in some circumstances, fixed in SyncToy 2.1.

FreeFileSync knocks spots off it in any case - it's almost as good feature-wise as the paid-for versions of SyncBack, and seems much faster in scanning operations, especially over a network.

Jimmy1983 · 29 Dec 2009 at 00:18

CaptainCrash said:
IIRC there was a bug involving timestamps which messed up incremental backups in some circumstances, fixed in SyncToy 2.1.

FreeFileSync knocks spots off it in any case - it's almost as good feature-wise as the paid-for versions of SyncBack, and seems much faster in scanning operations, especially over a network.

Quite happy with SyncToy, but may try out FreeFileSync