Bakup software recommendations wanted

[Dennis Snelgrove]

As the title says, I'd like to get any good recommendations. Is there
any software out there that would back up to a DVD without compressing
the files, and would pack the DVD as tightly as possible? To explain
what I mean, a number of years ago, I remember there being a piece of
software that created a RAMdisk, then wrote an image to it of exactly
one CD which it would burn to an actual CD. The program would scan the
entire backup request, and write whatever files/folders it could in
order to get every last byte of space from the destination CD. In
other words, if it wrote a bunch of directories and there was maybe
22k of space left, and there was a single file somewhere else on the
drive that would fit this space, it would include it in order to fill
the CD to the limit, rather than just kick out with the extra space
left open.

Is there such a program out there these days?

 

[Leonard Grey]

Dennis:

Your first decision is: "What is my backup strategy?" Your backup
strategy includes:

What do I need to backup?
How often should I backup?
To what media?
In what format?

For example:
If you want to backup Windows and your installed software, your best bet
is disk imaging software.

If you'll be backing up often you'll be looking for a program that has
flexible scheduling.

If you want to backup to optical media, you'll want a program that
supports your optical drive, both natively and in the 'rescue media'.

You want to decide whether to backup in a proprietary format, readable
only by the backup program, or in native format or as a zip file.

With those decisions you go looking for software. Narrow your choices
based on reviews and how the GUI and feature set looks to you, then you
take advantage of the free trials and make the choice that's best for you.