easiest to install and use backup solution?

J

jdraughn

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2007
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What is the easiest solution available to backup your computer? I was kind of hoping for an external harddrive that had a button that when pushed, would start the software which would perform the backup with very little to no hassle.

I kind of like the windows home server backup solution which is totally automated and effecient, except for the fact that you have to have a whole seperate and expensive computer running on the network. (expensive being the operating system).

I don't want to install something like windows one care either. I want the software to be practically invisible and not popping up every time you boot with some kind of warning or informational message.

It would be neat so that if you were to setup the external USB drive as a bootable device, then it would boot into a menu allowing you to restore from a backup.

Any ideas? This is for an older gentleman at my work who knows nothing about computers and wants something easy to use for himself and his wife.

Burning a dvd would be too complex :) It would require having to pick and choose specific files and folders all over the computer.

he only has a 30GB drive and has no interest in really upgrading the computer itself, since it's perfectly adequate for what he needs. He is going to buy a 22" monitor as a gift for his wife. I told him that a bright new flat panel monitor would probably make a much greater impression on his wife then the actual computer itself.
 
jdraughn said:
I was kind of hoping for an external harddrive that had a button that when pushed, would start the software which would perform the backup with very little to no hassle.
Click to expand...


Continuous and automatic backup of your important digital assets from WD, not tested myself, you may want to read some reviews, but it looks like it's the easiest

For such a small amount of data, I personally would just find out how much data needs to be saved, buy two USB keys, and move all the data to one, allowing them to edit it there, and just run a weekly sync(mirror/echo) to the second key.

If they really want to save the whole drive and don't like the WD drives....just buy a 30GB or larger drive, and have have the Windows version of DD image the drive weekly or whenever. bit for bit copy goes along away.
 
I'd ask him if his data was valuable enough for offsite backup
from his main computer. For that you can use the shareware BootIt,
though you'd have to learn it, setup probably a "image file batch set",
show him how to attach maybe a firewire or usb drive,
..........
still applicable for ease-of-use
(not offsite)
if one sets it up (an hour probably total, then
it can go as many years as his Operating System. (maybe ) )
 
Thanks for the reply guys. It did just dawn on me that I should just try to get him a raid 1 system going. I happen to even have a raid card with IDE ports that I would never use. Restoring from the backup would be kind of hard, but as far as the backups go... gets no easier then that.

I am not as worried about a disaster melting down his computer or a burning down his house which would require offsite backups. I will make sure he knows to back up his REALLY important stuff to a flash drive like was mentioned.

Thanks guys.
 
RAID 1 only covers him against a hard drive hardware failure.

If he deletes a file by mistake, it will be deleted from both drives. RAID 1 will not get him that file back. A backup would.
 
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