Data backup solutions

[Gaius Baltar]

Hello,

I have a little question... I have 2 computers, one station at home and one
laptop, both with an external harddisk. Sometimes I copy/scan datas to my
laptop and sometimes to my pc for my studies. At the moment I use TrayBackup
to copy the datas from laptop to pc and from my pc to laptop, so that all
datas are always on both external harddisks. I need two external harddisks,
because my girl-friend help me sometimes with her laptop.
Now the problem is, that TrayBackup needs more than 10 minutes for 4 gb
datas. I think in one year I will have maybe 20 or 30 gb datas. This lasts
too long for daily backups. :-(

How can I speed up the daily backups?
What program would be much better than TrayBackup?
What solution would be the best one in your opinion?

Gaius

 

[Chelsea]

Hi Gaius
10 minutes for 4GB sounds pretty good to me, although when you work it out
its only 6.6MB/s which doesn't sound so hot, when high performance drives
can now do bursts at 180MB/s. I'm not sure you'll get higher performance
from other software though. I use Acronis Trueimage Workstation. It is a
whole disk or partition imaging program which takes about 5 minutes to image
2.5GB partitions, but that does include a verify scan as well. Trueimage
will also do incremental backups which are obviously quicker. Trueimage can
also be scheduled to run at convenient times and also works across a
network. As it is wizard driven it is extremely easy to use. I should say it
does backups from inside Windows and you can set it to just image selected
files and folders-which I suspect happens very fast. I would thoroughly
recommend it as it has never yet failed in two years of daily use-unlike
Symantec Ghost/Drive Image which let me down on a number of occassions. If
interested there is a trial at www.acronis.com.

Chelsea

 

[DL]

I use Backer http://www.cordes-dev.com/ a full demo vesrion is available,
has a nag screen.
As I only sync changed files, from a 8gb folder it takes less than two mins.
I cannot remember the time taken to create the first sync

 

[The Guru]

I use SyncBackSE for this. It's a very versatile tool that can
synchronize folders as well as make backups. You can read a review of
it and download a trial version from here:
http://www.tech-pro.net/syncbackse.html

The PC Guru: www.the-pc-guru.com

 

[Jaga]

I could recommend you to use 'True Image'
(http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/) for it. I
recently started using it, and I think it's the easiest backup
solution. You’ll just be able to create an image of your HDD and a
bootable CD (it takes not much space due to compression). Then if you
need reformat/reinstall windows or if the system suddenly crushed, you
could use your CD. And the most important: using backup disk
systematically you'll never loose any data. The disk backup file
contains the exact copy of a hard disk, including all the computer
data, operating system, and programs.

 

[Gaius Baltar]

Thank your for your quick replies.

What about quicker harddiscs? Could it be a help to accelerate the copy
process?

@Chelsea and Jaga:
Can true image do also backups from a system partition so that if one
harddisc fails, the other can be used immediately?

Gaius

 

[John A]

I think HandyBackup is great
www.handybackup.net

John Allen