Quick and easy backup software

[Chemical]

The situation: A client's home PC needs to be backed up (documents, music, email, etc)

What software do you use for a quick and easy backup?

Some programs recommended to me:

• Mail Store (for email backup, free)
• EaseUS Todo Backup (requires driver install, free)
• Fab's AutoBackup 4 Tech (I've used the beta and yes it's nice but going through college I don't have money for a license.)
• other people recommend simple copy & paste

[tf76]

FBACKUP
SYNCTOY2


Theres some free Acronis and paragon products as well



Regards,

[YeOldeStonecat]

For freebie quick 'n simple backups of stuff like doc/pics....I like FreeFileSynch
http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/

[ell]

I use cobian, free and has lots of options.

[drpcfix]

I second that - cobian backup is awesome for basic stuff.

here is why;

• it will impersonate an admin user
• you can install as system tray or service
• it will backup to FTP
• it will run scripts before or after jobs
• it does incremental pretty intelligently
• it does pretty reliable email alerts for failures
• it does good encryption for those offsite FTP backups

We actually had a branded build done just for us when he open-sourced version 8 - check it out - drpcfix.com/links-and-files/9-databackup.html

PM if you want my list of default settings I use, after installing about 100 of these

[Larry Sabo]

I have found most of the mentioned programs too complex for novice home users to use/modify, and prefer GFI Backup. More intuitive.

[kevinjhaag]

http://www.bvckup.com/ which I use personally and I'm looking forward to version 2 when it comes out.

http://www.fbackup.com/ I've used for some customers and also a couple servers.

http://backup.comodo.com I've also used in past and used on customers computers too.

[bdakter]

It would be quite simple to copy the Users profile onto an external hard drive. No programs necessary. When you're done, you can copy it back.

[atlanticjim]

CrashPlan
I use the free version on all my family's computers.
Good end user interface and a completely quiet operation.
And it emails me a backup report weekly to remind me how well it is doing its job.

[drpcfix]

here are my notes from cobian usage;

here are the basic things we change;

• Don't use VSS*
• we do incremental
• don't keep separated folders by timestamp if you are doing incremental, only if just full
• turn on logging in the main config so that you can email logs on failures
• disable daily log emails
• make it only email on failures
• we use our own mail relay, gmail or something probably works

as for scripts - if someone REALLY needs to back up an outlook PST, we'll make a batch file that will kill outlook.exe at midnight, and cobian can fire that right before it starts the backup. although pushing to live365 exchange is a way better solution.

This backup software is kind of hacky compared to other stuff out there, but we have it running on about half of the computers we're managing backups for - it gets the job done if the job is simple enough