Automatic data backup

[RKDus]

Can someone recommend a program to automatically back up a customer's data before a format, preferably free? I'm sick of spending ages trawling through hard drives to copy data and verify that it is backed up. Do programs like this exist that can get into other profiles in windows? I know ones like temp file cleaners often have problems with that.

[greggh]

You might want to look at FAB's AutoBackup.
http://fabs.dyndns.org/index2.php?lang=en&section=freewares

It runs great from a PE environment.

[RKDus]

Exactly what I was looking for. Nice one, Greggh! Is it reliable? How does it handle backups when some files may be corrupted?

[greggh]

Its reliable enough. But dont take anyones word for it. Test it out. Whenever I find a new tool that I might start using on customer machines I test them thoroughly. I have VMWare setup and have some OS images that are setup just like a lot of my customer pcs with lots of data in their outlook, internet bookmarks and my documents. I test out tools on those to see how they act and if they get everything I want.

It will do a lot of the work for you but you still need to be safe and do some yourself. Things like making sure that you find their financial data if they have it. Looking in Program Files for anything by Intuit, Microsoft Money, or anything for taxes. Then making sure that you have their data for that. Usually it will be in a location that FAB gets, but sometimes it isnt, you can put those data files wherever you want. Sometimes its an old version of quicken so its directory is c:\quickenw. You never know, so use FAB for what it does and then do a quick scan with your own eyes.