Backup Software

closed

sync's also sync corruptions, viruses, and mistakes. A worm or hardware problem could take both drives out in seconds - backup most important data to dvd as well

Hammyman

If you're running Windows 7, it has it built in.

asbokid

Chomeur wrote: »

But I just want to make a copy of what's on my main drive. So the filing system will be just the same. ?

Most of what you backup will be system and userspace binaries. It is making a mountain out of a molehill since you should already have these binaries on your install and application diskettes.

This is what is so wrong with Windows.. It's archaic.

There is no earthly reason for muddling the operating system kernel with the application binaries with the user documents, all on the same goddamn disk partition.

It makes archiving a mammoth task..

Now as terabyte drives become the norm, it's gonna take a huge number of DVDs to back up a whole drive.

Wouldn't it make a whole-load-of-sense to have several disk partitions, so that you can back up only what is actually important....

Imagine having the following mountpoints, each stored in their own physical disk partition..

/boot for the operating system kernel
/usr/bin for the userspace binaries
/home/ for the user documents

Using this structure to the file system, when the operating system fails, you can reinstall it by overwriting the existing kernel and binaries in /boot and /usr/bin/

You can do that without having to worry about your precious personal files, since they are totally safe in a completely separate disk partition mounted at /home in the file system..

That's exactly the way Linux manages the file system..

BillyGatesWare will take some time to catch up...

HoofeHearted

Windows:-
o C:\Windows - OS
o C:\Program Files - Applications
o C:\Documents & Settings or C:\Users - user data

That's the default. Savvy windows users mount the user data on a separate partition or disk.

esuhl

Compare the source and destination directories when using SyncToy - I've very often had unexplained discrepancies. FreeFileSync is a program very similar to SyncToy, but (in my experience) it seems to be more reliable.