RudyN Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 My wife wants to backup her laptop hard drive and we're looking for a good backup software. Any suggestions? She has no DVD burner, only cd so I've thought about buying a external DVD burner so we don't have to use 30 cds to back up stuff. Or would it be easier to just drop and drag the important stuff and backup that way? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFo Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 What about this? Carbonite My folks use this for their PCs and it works really well. You pay a $50/year fee for automatic backups that go online. No CDs or DVDs are necessary and it's pretty easy to get your files back if your hard drive goes out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnemaEms Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Why not buy an external Harddrive to backup that way? Much cheaper and easier to replace files with current ones. -Dean- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisBardon Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 I use Allway Sync and a pair of 500Gb external hard drives for backup. Both the drives have the same content-I just keep one offsite, and trade them out every so often. You just have to set up the sync job once, and then either manually run it, or set it up to run automatically when you connect an external device. I don't know if I'd trust anything important or long term to a writeable DVD/CD. Besides, external hard drives are pretty cheap now-I got both of mine for about $100. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Two suggestions: 1. Microsoft has a free powertoy called SyncToy for Vista. If she only needs to back up particular files or folders, you tell SyncToy how it should be done and then run it manually when your external HDD is connected. 2. I *think* some of the external HDDs come with backup software. Make sure they aren't hosing you with trial versions, though. Like others have said, external HDDs can be convenient. Make sure you aren't leaving them connected and on-site if you're using them for backup. Other than that, I don't know what people think of using HDDs for backup versus optical. I use external HDDs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foogledricks Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 I like the newest version of Ghost because it can image an entire drive, and can also just do particular folders with rules. So for instance I have an image backup of my OS drive, but my datadrive I have a nightly backup of specific folders and then you can look up "versions" of files, almost like using source control, which has come in handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenMonkey Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 What about this? Carbonite My folks use this for their PCs and it works really well. You pay a $50/year fee for automatic backups that go online. No CDs or DVDs are necessary and it's pretty easy to get your files back if your hard drive goes out. I'm with J.Fo on this. I plan on going this route soon. What happens if you have a house fire or something? There go your digital photos and stuff. Carbonite, HP upline, there's a few services out there like this now. Offsite backups are always the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RudyN Posted October 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 She doesn't want to go the external HD route because her friend had one and it crashed. I'm thinking it might be the best way to go since I don't want to have a lot of dvds laying around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisBardon Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 She doesn't want to go the external HD route because her friend had one and it crashed. I'm thinking it might be the best way to go since I don't want to have a lot of dvds laying around. Yes, it's possible to have a hard drive fail, but DVD failures are a lot more likely. There are also problems with cheap enclosures sometimes-worst case, you might be able to retrieve data off of something by cracking the enclosure and interfacing with the drive directly. This is also why I have everything duplicated on multiple drives. One backup copy is by the computer, and one is offsite. The offsite one might be a month or so out of date, but it still has the bulk of my photos, video, and music. I figure the odds of both drives failing at the same time are pretty low, and this way I'm covered against the house burning down as well as hardware failure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RudyN Posted October 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 Thanks for all of the advice. I'll sit down with her and figure out what we are going to do.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James T Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 Just remember that DVD backups aren't 100% either (check as soon as your finish). I backed up my stuff on a few DVDs and one of them was corrupted. Now there's a 2 year gap in my picture collection And if curious, I backup through external HD now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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