Backup software recommendations?

sitheris

sitheris

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2004
Messages
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Hi all, I am going to be turning my 80gb IDE HD into an external usb HD, and I would like to use it for backups.

I'm looking for software that will let me specify the folders to backup, click a button, and that's it. I would also like to have the ability to schedule backups for every week or something...and also I would like for each backup to overwrite what has already been backed up.

Suggestions? Oh yeah I would prefer something that is free and/or open source
 
I really like Acronis Trueimage 8.0 and I believe that it will do everything you mentioned. I have used it to make complete images of my drive on an external usb drive from windows and a bootable CD and it has always performed wonderfully. It backs up my 35GB or so of used space on my notebook in 20-25 minutes. It did cost me $30 but I have never found a free backup program worth using.

I know that Norton Ghost 2003 will not support a usb drive and I have had trouble with 9.0 making restorable images. Of course, a full image doesn't seem to be what you're after.

www.acronis.com if you're interested.
 
Fwiw, Ghost 2003 can certainly work with USB devices. Although its not a function I use regularly, I just backed up a smallish partition to a USB External HDD -- the image creation process was a little slower to initiate than HDD > HDD but once started ran at
323 mb/min on my machine.

Open Ghost 2003 > Options > External storage driver settings > select 'USB 2.0 drivers'. Also put a check in Assign Drive Letters. Apply + Ok, and that's it.

I believe you'll need to undo these changes if you want to run a hdd > hdd image creation.

Of course this is for drive or partition imaging. Hopefully someone can post a recommendation for file specific backups.
 
Hmm, doing exactly what you said never worked for me. It's possible that it was an incompatibility with the one or two devices I tried. Oh well, I'll step out of the thread now....
 
Well I don't plan on using Ghost, I just want somethign that's free.
 
sitheris said:
Well I don't plan on using Ghost, I just want somethign that's free.
Click to expand...
Ghost is a great way to go with this. If you insist on free, then I'd suggest a combination of xcopy, a batch file, and the task scheduler.
 
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