Backup

[square_imp]

Very simple question about backing up, just bought a 250gb external HD that I want to use to backup my important work files on my computer. Basically I want it to be a clone of my work and to save again when I edit some work or do new stuff. Can this be setup to do automatically? The other issue is that I only have 1 internal HD which has my system files and my work, does that complicate things? Obviously I dont want a copy of the system files on the external.

Peter

 

[rpstewart]

Having a backup which automatically tracks the changes you make to a file in real time is a bad idea. If you accidentally overwrite a file and your automated backup solution does the same thing on the external drive what happens? You lose the stuff you were trying to protect.

A better option is a regularly scheduled backup using something like Microsoft's SyncToy powertoy to keep a set of directories in sync between the internal and external drives. A daily backup should be sufficiently regular to minimise the potential loss but sufficiently irregular that errors can be spotted before they're replicated to the backup.

 

[jbloggs]

SyncToy is a very good program, you might also want to have a look at Cobian Backup which has a few more options than SyncToy.