Comments on: Effective Backups

By: Gigi

Gigi — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:07:23 +0000

I have been very happy with crashplan. It is free to backup to another computer, but they also have a paid option to backup to their servers. I have been very happy with it.

By: Clare

Clare — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:39:15 +0000

For my Mac I use CarbonCopy Cloner and have it set to back up the HD once a week and my Home file every other evening.

By: Mander

Mander — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:44:56 +0000

I use a program called SyncBack; I got it for free from the Giveaway of the Day but it’s normally $30. I don’t have an especially sophisticated setup, it just copies a defined list of directories to an external hard drive at daily, weekly, and monthly intervals. There are more advanced settings you can use, such as making encrypted .zip files of your backups.

By: Claude

Claude — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:55:49 +0000

>>Any software recommendations for doign the daily hard drive backups?
Try Backup4all ( http://www.backup4all.com ) as it has an option to store the files being backed up without archiving them (you can easily browse through the files in the destination this way). Of course it has the option to back up using zip compression, and given that’s standard zip you can open the backup even with the built-in Windows zip viewer.

By: Santiago

Santiago — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:18:14 +0000

I use Windows and have a very dependable small application called Cobian Backup. It can be setup so it backs up scheduled tasks and after that is done I record those into DVDs and label them with the date and info that is stored in them. I do have to mention that Cobian uses .zip files so they can be easily opened/viewed.

By: Quint

Quint — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:54:50 +0000

For backing up to an external hard drive or network folder on Windows, I just use plain old xcopy. It works dependably, and is on almost every Win box out there. I set up a scheduled task with a little batch file, and leave my computer on over night.

On *nix based boxes, rsync is a great tool, but does require a little knowledge to get it working just right.

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:24:27 +0000

@Mike Nash - Something based on Rsync sounds like what you want. JungleDisk also does what you describe. You might also checkout the backup for OS X method I talked about earlier.

By: Mie Nash

Mie Nash — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:33:53 +0000

Any software recommendations for doign the daily hard drive backups?

Most commercial software compresses into a proprietary file system so all you see on the backup drive in one big blob of a file. I find this to be very bad.

Backup files should be standard file folder structure so you can browse and confirm the files are really there.