Back up computers to an external drive?

Jo4

Is it possible to back up about 4 desktops, 3 laptops & 1 netbook to an external drive? How do I get one external hard drive to back up all these computers?

I did try looking on here but I couldn't find an answer.

esuhl

You could simply copy the directories that need backing up into separate sub-directories on the external drive using something like FreeFileSync...

Or you could use an imaging program (which converts a drive or directory into a standalone image file). You could just use a different filename for each computer that you want to back up (or each drive or each root directory). Something like Acronis TrueImage should do the trick, although it's not free.

Jo4

One computer has a virus which I hope to attempt to remove tomoore & then I'll attempt to do the back up.

closed

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/56187969#Comment_56187969

googler

If you get a USB drive, and each computer has USB, you create one folder on the drive for each computer, and simply copy/paste the data you want to keep from each in turn to the drive, moving the drive from one to the other.

Do you have install disks for your operating systems and programs, or where you've downloaded programs, have you kept the install executable?

grumpycrab

Question to the original poster; do you already have "image" backups of the 8 computers? IE in the event a computer dies due to hard disk failure do you have the disk(or disks or USB drives) to recover the computers? As a minimum you should have disk(s) to be able to recover the computers to their factory state.

If that's all done then I suggest you start thinking about backing up day-day data. Although there is a whole "Backing Up" sticky I recommend this freebie from IOMEGA (since taken over by Lenovo)
https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21683

It lets you specify the directories to backup and when they are backed up. I use the "real-time" (= on change) option but if that degrades performance you can specifiy when the changed data is backed up. It is important that you ensure that all your data is covered. Email can be forgotten. If you use POP (where email is downloaded to your computer rather than being kept at the ISP server) then you may want to ensure that the mail directory(ies) are covered too.