which external backup method

I

iffy

New Member
Ok guys, I need to buy an external hdd for backup purposes - ofcourse. Now I want to stick to Western Digital because so far I am, touch wood having a good experience with this make. But now I don't know if I should purchase an usb external hdd, one powered by an adapter or purchase hdd and stick them in an enclosure? Please help and direct me on what to do.
 
If ya have a drive buy the case. Cheaper. 'Rosewill' works fine and adapts to a mini. Comes with a rubber boot (because i wanted the venting. Mind ya i bought to transfer at a family members house or friends with pictures, utilities and thats about it. If you have other than a laptop stick it in the tower. there it will be faster. USB is not the fastest. A time for both though. buy from www.newegg.com
About $25.00

the external with hard drive if ya dont have one do not cost that much.
which is cheapest for ya.
 
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The drive will need to be in use all the time. Or atleast once a day anyway. It would be great if the system can back up the files as they change. For me that would be every 30 minutes. Firstly, is there a way to achieve this?
Secondly, Im thinking of buying a couple of hard drives, 1 to implement raid, and one to make backups to. Currently I make an image of the drive every other day.
 
iffy said:
The drive will need to be in use all the time. Or atleast once a day anyway. It would be great if the system can back up the files as they change. For me that would be every 30 minutes. Firstly, is there a way to achieve this?
Secondly, Im thinking of buying a couple of hard drives, 1 to implement raid, and one to make backups to. Currently I make an image of the drive every other day.
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First off, unless you're running a business there is no need to backup every single day. Once a week is more than enough. There are many backup programs available that backup incrementally.

Your 2nd point makes no sense. You need 2 identical drives for RAID. The best method of backup would be to back everything up to a RAID 1 array; so if one drive fails the back up isn't lost.
 
Is for a business. Really don't wanna lose anything of the system. Gonna look into raid. Any other suggestions
 
RAID Definately... you can go to the ends of the earth with back ups...depends on how much you want to spend and how important that info is.

I think maybe a RAID1 is good for most people maybe even have a spare hard drive on hand or get a enclosure that can use a hot spare.

if you want to get even pricier you can use raid5... or invest in online backups.

How much data are we talking here?
 
The post is getting old. He's likely made his decision. Still say for stand alone install another drive and when backing up just sync the files to the other. I do or never did disconnect the 2nd drive. works well. never lost one, yet.
usb external is strictly for portability. thats it.
 
You may regret the instant backup. When the previous version of a file is overwritten, it's gone forever.

Strategy depends on what you are doing. I prefer to use methods that save older versions of files. You never know when your latest edit turns out worse than the earlier version. Saving temp files should be avoided as they take up space.

I do incremental backups twice a week (or as needed) but do a simple, separate, backup of my main working folders as I go. If I do a lot of edits, I save immediately when done. I have the main backup versions to fall back on.

Doing automatic backups is fine. I prefer to initiate manually so I can think whether I really want to save the new stuff.

For speed, making a disk image is quickest.
 
Currently I make an image everyday, and save the real important files to usb stick. Im gonna look into raid and an image every week plus a backup of some sort throughouyt the day.
 
SyncToy

To copy important documents etc SyncToy works well. It's not automatic but only takes a few clicks to get the job done
Use the Echo option to copy the edited/updated version to the external harddrive and delete old version.
Use the Contribute option if you want to keep all the copies as they are edited/updated. Then simply view the external harddrive folder by Date Created, if you want to go back to a previous edit you can easily find any copy from hours, days, weeks ago.

I keep all my important documents in one folder (with sub-folders) and simply sync that one folder, it takes only a few seconds to run.
I also sync other stuff from time to time but mostly because I can, not because it's important ;)

SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.
Click to expand...

I also do an image about once a week or before testing new software, making major tweaks or changes etc
 
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FrillyBits said:
To copy important documents etc SyncToy works well......
Click to expand...
That's pretty good for quick backups. Although I have not tried it, I would guess that you can actually backup a number of working folders (unrelated in the folder tree) into one backup folder by selecting "Contribute" and making pairs of each working folder to the backup folder. It's the sort of thing you could do at the start of the working day and run when needed, keeping the previous versions, reviewing at the end of the day and deleting unwanted versions. That could be done manually or by shortcut or command line.
 
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