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Coomber

Coomber

Coomber

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Joined
14 Jun 2009
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59
Location
Kent
I have decided to look at keeping a proper backup of my data recently after putting it off for so long. I've bought an external hard drive, now I just need some decent software to schedule it. The built in backup tool in Windows 7 seems a bit naff and creates a file you can't normally browse (if I am not mistaken?)

Can anyone recommend some basic software that meets the following criteria:

- Schedule so it prompts me to plug in the drive e.g. once a week
- Can backup only new/changed stuff and delete deleted stuff from the backup (i.e. it won't just copy everything over from scratch, not sure if I'm explaining that correctly but I think the term is differential?)
- Preferably free

I am also interested in encrypting the drive after, if the software does this for you then great, if not I was thinking of using BitLocker?

Thanks in advance for your feedback & happy new year!
 
Cobian Backup
Duplicati

They both offer encryption. Truecrypt is an option if you would prefer full-drive encryption.
 
Do you want a whole system backup? Or just data files/folders? Or both?

Macrium Reflect -great for making whole system backups or backing up specific files/folders into one archive file.

Google it.

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robocopy is a built in commandline tool that is great for backing up data only, basically it copies all files/folders specified. Then the next time you run it, it will only copy new/updated files/folders to the backup location.

To use robocopy, it's build into Vista/7/8+ already.

robocopy /r "c:\source folder" "x:\destination backup folder"

If you copied that into a txt file, then edited it with your folders, then saved it as 'file backup.bat' (not .bat.txt). Now double click the file, it will copy/paste all from the source folder to the destination folder.


I use a combination of both of the above. Fast and easy.
 
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