backing up two computers

frankie

I've a desktop with HDD of 160GB and a laptop HDD 320GB.

If I get a desktop external drive (500GB or 1TB) will I be able to use the drive to fully backup both of my systems or will I need an external drive for each system?

If it is possible to use just one external drive, will I need any special backup software?

Thanks in anticipation.

Beast

frankie wrote: »

I've a desktop with HDD of 160GB and a laptop HDD 320GB.

If I get a desktop external drive (500GB or 1TB) will I be able to use the drive to fully backup both of my systems or will I need an external drive for each system?

If it is possible to use just one external drive, will I need any special backup software?

Thanks in anticipation.

You can use the one external drive to back up both PCs.

Inactive

frankie wrote: »

If it is possible to use just one external drive, will I need any special backup software?

Thanks in anticipation.

Yes, if you buy a Seagate or Maxtor Drive, or have them within your computer you can download free software from the Seagate/Maxtor sites.

JasX

You will not 'need' any backup software, if you do get some you'll need to be careful around how they're configured to not get confused with between PCs and be able to cope when the drive is disconnected.

If you use no software you'll just see a big empty extra drive you can drag and drop copies of your files too and will have 100% control over them... obv drawback there is getting lazy/forgetful might widen the gap between what you have backed up and the 'live' stuff on your PCs

busenbust

If I get a desktop external drive (500GB or 1TB) will I be able to use the drive to fully backup both of my systems or will I need an external drive for each system?

The external drive is in no way 'tied' to the machine; you can use one drive with as many (Windows) machines as you wish:cool:

If it is possible to use just one external drive, will I need any special backup software?

Yes, it's possible (see above;) ) and, yes, most drives have their own backup software.

See this thread also for some external drive recommendations.

HTH.

frankie

Many thanks guys.

So I get an appropriate external drive, do I have to configure in some way so that each of my computers has a separate space/folder on there?

I want to create a full backup for each machine and then do incremental backups every couple of days.

I get the idea that just copying files would end up being very confusing for me after a while knowing what is what and from where!!

Thanks again

debitcardmayhem

One way is to create two folders on the drive say Lappy and Desk save the relative backups in each. If you keep the Drive attached to the desktop after creating the two full backups then you could use something like sync toy (from Microsoft) to copy folders from each system to each relative folder and sync on demand or create a schedule to do them at set times, all you need to do is set up the drive folders (Lappy and Desk) to be shared over the network.

Stompa

Inactive wrote: »

Yes, if you buy a Seagate or Maxtor Drive, or have them within your computer you can download free software from the Seagate/Maxtor sites.

The same is true of Western Digital.

Inactive

Stompa wrote: »

The same is true of Western Digital.

Not quite sure what you mean?

catch22

Stompa wrote: »

The same is true of Western Digital.

Really - I bought a Dell with a WD drive and was regretting not having the Seagate drive instead, as it has the available software for free backup.

Sorry to doubt you - http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en uses Acronis