DSF

Just wanted to share some of my findings this last week.

Having played around with the different Rollback/Timeline software available I decided to look again at my backup procedure.

I'm just installed Win XP 64 on one drive but wanted to keep Win XP 32 up and running on another just in case the transition wasn't successful. I decided to put my valuable data on a third drive to keep that separate and back up to an external drive.

I've always used a Maxtor One Touch which has served me well but in the last few months it's decided the software won't run so is now just a stand alone external drive. It used to be very useful having the incremental backup and sync software, worked a treat but never mind...time to move on.

Having bought Acronis True Image Home 2011 I've only really used the Clone drive option. I don't like the way the backup works and it uses a little too much CPU for my standard spec. system. So I started to look at other backup software. It quickly became apparent that none of the software I was looking at did what I wanted. After searching I realised that maybe I should be looking at Synchronisation software rather than backup.

This search led me to a few programs but the two that have impressed the most are SyncBack and Goodsync. Suncback is my preffered option at the moment and scheduling regular sync across drives is pretty painless and not too cpu intensive. You do have to make sure you get your options set up correctly or it ends up emptying directories and shifting them elsewhere!

Two free programs then that are certainly worth a look and offer something most bloated backup programs don't

Perfect timing Justin!!!

My back up stopped working about two weeks ago and I kept forgetting to have a dig round for something decent. Syncback downloaded and set to run 3am tomorrow morning.... Perfect!

Nice one Just double check those backup/sync settings

I agree with you about Acronis. Ive uninstalled mine as it was constantly locking up my computer. Im going to look into Syncback.
Thanks.

I became fed up with the peculiarities of backup/sync software. These days I just use Dropbox. Everything is backed-up and sync'd constantly. Edited/deleted files can be retrieved for up to 30days in the event you've made an error. I'm sync'd to my other computers, and my files are available to me from all of my devices and any computer via the website. It's so easy. Sure, it's not free if you want a decent bit of space, but it's not expensive if peace of mind and protecting your essential files is important to you.

I know what you're saying I use Dropbox with one of my customers and it works well. Started looking into these services and have gone with SugarSync for my own data. Very impressed with the service so far, works a treat. How safe are these backup services though?

Hi JSR

How much does your DROPBOX account cost and how much space do you have?

i would love to use DROPBOX but last time I checked it was really expensive.

Justin;50211 wrote:I know what you're saying I use Dropbox with one of my customers and it works well. Started looking into these services and have gone with SugarSync for my own data. Very impressed with the service so far, works a treat. How safe are these backup services though?

By "safe" do you mean "safe from prying eyes"? I keep my business-critical stuff in TrueCrypt volumes so, even if someone was to "pry", they wouldn't get far.

No, not worried about anyone seeing it I just mean if the company suffer a data loss of any kind, I assume everything is backed up.

socialgiraffe;50224 wrote:Hi JSR

How much does your DROPBOX account cost and how much space do you have?

i would love to use DROPBOX but last time I checked it was really expensive.

It depends how you define "really expensive". I don't see £6/mo. as particularly expensive when it comes to protecting my business and critical files but others might.

They've recently doubled their space for free. I'm on the 100GB service (used to be 50GB), so I have about 109GB of space at present. The next level up has recently been doubled up to 200GB.