Free back-up software ?

Darkst4r · 15 Oct 2011 at 00:08

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a free back-up program that I could use to copy the contents of "My Documents, My Pictures and My Music" folders that would copy all the data in it's original form to an external drive in one click ?

At the moment I'm over-writing the data manually for each folder every week or so and to be honest I'm thinking there must be an easier way !

Any advice would be great, thanks

Philtor · 15 Oct 2011 at 00:17

Check out Robocopy.

doggs · 15 Oct 2011 at 00:19

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=15155

Philtor · 15 Oct 2011 at 00:25

^^ Good option as well! Forgot about that wee tool!

Magic_x_uk · 15 Oct 2011 at 08:45

Also interested in this as well. Can I use something like this to send it to a external USB Drive as my back up device.

Can you also tell it what folders/ files etc you want to copy.

What I do at the moment is drag and copy over to my external HD the files I want to back up, Takes a while as you can imagine and I am not doing it regular. Which could lead to problems.

I am using windows 7 32 (desktop) and 64 (laptop)

Xelene · 15 Oct 2011 at 08:55

rsync

bledd · 15 Oct 2011 at 15:30

robocopy /e "C:\source folder" "D:\ destination folder\backup"

edit that as you need it and save it in notepad, call it "music backup.bat"

Now if you double click it, it will do it for you

jbloggs · 15 Oct 2011 at 17:16

Apart from robocopy, there is also Cobian Backup and SyncBack Freeware...

Jay794 · 15 Oct 2011 at 17:18

Does CTRL + C CTRL + V not work well enough? it's not difficult to keep track of new documents, just organise them by date, simple.

I was using backup software to backup all my media but I found that it was taking too long as it was scanning all the old stuff to make sure it hadn't changed. Now I just CTRL C/ CTRL V.

d_brennen · 15 Oct 2011 at 17:23

Alway Sync is the nuts tbh

bledd · 15 Oct 2011 at 22:20

Jay794 said:
Does CTRL + C CTRL + V not work well enough? it's not difficult to keep track of new documents, just organise them by date, simple.

I was using backup software to backup all my media but I found that it was taking too long as it was scanning all the old stuff to make sure it hadn't changed. Now I just CTRL C/ CTRL V.

Robocopy tears through files at an incredible rate when scanning

Magic_x_uk · 16 Oct 2011 at 08:15

which and where for robocopy (win 7 32 and 64)

Is that the best one, just tried sync toy and it looked like you can just set one folder.

Or can you set more than one.

apatia77 · 16 Oct 2011 at 09:13

doggs said:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=15155

+1

SyncToy 2.1 from microsoft is just simply awesome. Very easy to set up and use.

Hamster · 4 Nov 2011 at 19:16

I quite like the idea of Robocopy and I'd prefer a GUI. There appears to be quite a few. Can anyone recommend one? I want to schedule an initial backup then incremental backups of 7 internal drives to a Sata storage tower (has port multiplier, JBOD) that contains 7 drives for backup. I plan to keep the storage tower hidden away and connect it for backup once a week.

VeNT · 4 Nov 2011 at 20:19

robocopy is epic and once you've setup your batch file you can just run it via schedules

mrk · 4 Nov 2011 at 22:02

As a long term SyncToy User....FreeFileSync is better in every regard and also free.

welshdragon · 4 Nov 2011 at 22:27

Microsoft sync toy

Hamster · 4 Nov 2011 at 22:42

Thanks for the suggestions. They all good but the two I'm toying between at the moment are Robocopy and Freefilesync.

mrk: What kind of backup are you doing? As I'll be backing up a hell of a lot of data, a nice quick comparison of files will be needed. I guess you are doing incremental backups. How do you find the speed of comparing drives? Also do you know if the program is able to backup several drives in sequence without intervention?

mrk · 4 Nov 2011 at 23:25

Yeah you can add multiple folder/drive pairs to a backup batch (the green + button on the top left side) and save it as a profile for use again next time round so the possibilities are almost limiteless.

I backup all my drives in the PC on to one backup rive connected via an external SATA port. I first run a comparison on my various backup profiles that I've created and check out that everything looks good in the pre-backup comparison screen and then click Sync to begin the process. You can see what I mean in the screenshot above. The backup and comparison processes are fast as well.

I do mirror backups at present (from left to right) but you can do incremental if you so wish or customise it via fine tuning each step.

It's really quite packed with the right amount of backup and sync features that even power users could ask for in a nice interface.

Hamster · 4 Nov 2011 at 23:32

mrk said:
Yeah you can add multiple folder/drive pairs to a backup batch (the green + button on the top left side) and save it as a profile for use again next time round so the possibilities are almost limiteless.

I backup all my drives in the PC on to one backup rive connected via an external SATA port. I first run a comparison on my various backup profiles that I've created and check out that everything looks good in the pre-backup comparison screen and then click Sync to begin the process. You can see what I mean in the screenshot above. The backup and comparison processes are fast as well.

I do mirror backups at present (from left to right) but you can do incremental if you so wish or customise it via fine tuning each step.

It's really quite packed with the right amount of backup and sync features that even power users could ask for in a nice interface.

Thanks for the excellent review there and I'm sold! Will get the drives into the backup tower tomorrow and get started.