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Backing up to external hard drive - help
I have to admit that I do not carry out regular backups, simply beause I cannot find any information on how, and what, to back up.
In an attempt to put things right, I have bought an iomega 500g external hard drive, and thought that it would guide me through the process, but it just seems to be a large memory stick. Therefore, I guess that I just need to copy & paste files to it.
Questions -
What do I copy & paste? Apart from 'My Documents' for each of 3 users, is that all I need to do? For instance I cannot find 'My Favorites' in 'My Documents'. What else may be hiding away somewhere?
If I do regular backups, how do I know what has been added to my PC since my last backup?
I have a desktop, and a laptop, and intend to take the external hard drive with me when I go abroad for long periods, along with my laptop, so that I have access to whatever files I may need.
ejn63
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87.5K Posts
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March 27th, 2010 13:00
Purchase a copy of Acronis TrueImage - it will allow you to back up the entire system on the external drive, so that in case of a hard drive failure or major system error you can be right back up and running in 15-20 minutes (vs. hours of reinstalling and configuring Windows manually otherwise).
zorba199
130 Posts
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March 27th, 2010 22:00
Syncback is an excellent free application that I use to back up regularly to my external harddrive. After having set it up and selected or deselected
folders, it takes a matter of minutes to back up.
Larna
51 Posts
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March 28th, 2010 11:00
Hello,
That sounded like a really good application, so I downloaded and installed it, but I just don't know what to do next.
It sounds a bit complicated, and talks about profiles etc. I think that I can set up a profile, but do I need to set up 2 profiles, one for each PC? I can't find any reference to backing up 2 PC's to an external hard drive.
Also, I have to give the source folder, but I want to back up documents for each of 3 different users. I tried to just give the source as 'C' drive, but it will not do this.
All I wanted to do was backup our files, and anything else that perhaps I should backup, but there is nothing obvious to set it going.
zorba199
130 Posts
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March 28th, 2010 11:00
Hi
the initial setup can take 5 to 10 minutes, once you have that you can in the future run the same profile, unless you want to change it.
First question is , do you want to synchronise or just back up the hdd of your pc to the external hd.
Then you have to create a profile , ie choose the source , most likely my documents folder of the hdd of your pc, and the destination, most likely
the external hdd.
Then you get to choose if you want to back up ALL the files from that folder or if you want to omit some folders (in that case choose 'back up the
source directories files, including selected sub-directories').
Then you run it...
Larna
51 Posts
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March 28th, 2010 11:00
Do I set up different profiles in order to backup the documents of different users? Do I do the same on my second PC? It's a bit confusing as the destination drive in my profile is G on this (desktop) PC, but obviously it will be different when I connect the external hard drive to my other (laptop) PC.
I know I sound extremely thick, but this just isn't simple. It is no wonder many people just do not back up their files.
harkawy
6 Posts
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March 28th, 2010 12:00
I have a 1.5 Tbyte external hard drive attached to my computer. I use Norton Ghost 10 to backup my computer. The Ghost setup is user friendly and easy to use. The default setup will create a backup schedule for the entire physical C: drive. Since my PC is on 24/7, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10:00 PM, the computer automatically backs up my Drive C: partition to the external. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays the computer backs up the Drive D: partition to the external. Sunday night at 10:00 the entire hard drive is backed up. I keep 4 backups of each so that I'm never more than one day behind; G-d forbid something happens. Then at 7:00 every morning, my computer automatically re-boots. When I come into the office around 9:30 AM, I have a clean computer ready to work.
I have tried the Acronis software, but I still like Ghost.
zorba199
130 Posts
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March 28th, 2010 12:00
Different users obviously may have to establish different profiles, since they access different folders. If you
want to backup from different pcs, you would have to install this application there as well and also create a profile.
Larna
51 Posts
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March 29th, 2010 05:00
Re Syncback:
I set up 3 profiles, one for each family member. Then I set up a group, as I believe that syncback would then automatically backup each of the 3 profiles in succession from a group.
Then I set up 3 folders on my external hard drive, one for each family member, or profile.
The strange thing is that 2 of the profiles were marked as successful when I ran the backup, but the third profile was marked as a failure, and yet all of the subfolders are listed on my external drive. I did get an error message '3 files could not be copied, deleted, or compressed. See the log file for more information.'
The log file lists many files (not just 3) that are marked 'Not in source. Skipping.' Many of these are itunes or jpg files, but some are .doc .xlr. .pdf .wks.