| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 116322 | 2011-02-27 05:46:00 | Backup Multiple PCs? | Winston001 (3612) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1181762 | 2011-02-27 05:46:00 | Ok, I've browsed previous threads and now bought an external Western Digital 500GB USB hard drive. I have three pcs to backup and assume that shouldn't be too hard. I plan to only backup data, not an image. However Google is not being my friend today so two questions: 1. Should I use a backup application like FBackup, or XP's builtin service? 2. Do these backup programs allow for incremental backups as data changes over months? Seems a simple question but at least one site referred to deleting the earlier backup. |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1181763 | 2011-02-27 05:53:00 | I use FBackup as one option on 3 Different PC's ( in conjunction with WHS) - the backups are always full backups, but I think they are planning incremental sometime soon. You would back up each PC to a separate folder on the external drive ( 1 for each PC) - The first backup gets wiped when the following one is done, so you only end up with one backup / PC each time - unless you manually go in and move a backup to another location. FBackup does backups in Zip format, so they can be opened on any PC that has a zipping program. XP's built in is hopeless - dont use it.:) |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1181764 | 2011-02-27 09:33:00 | Thanks Wainui. I suppose a new complete backup each time isn't something to be bothered about. It just seemed quicker if only the changes in data were loaded but I understand it won't be an overnight task if only My Documents are copied. A complete disk image is much slower? By the way, two pcs only have 40GB drives, and the third a 200GB half full. I'll give FBackup a try and see how I go. |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1181765 | 2011-02-27 12:09:00 | If you only need to back up one folder (ie. My documents) or so on each PC you can just run a sync to the external drive. Use SyncToy or robocopy.exe (command line) for that. Both of these have the option to check if the file already exist so they will run pretty fast after the initial sync. XP's built in backup software, NT Backup, is not too bad. It has the option to do differential and incremental backups. The only downside is that it's log file is pretty s*** to read but this shouldn't matter if you aren't backing up system files. All of the above options can also be scheduled to run automated. |
WarNox (8772) | ||
| 1181766 | 2011-02-27 20:46:00 | I plan to only backup data, not an image Thats why I suggested FBackup, it only backs up the selected data you want/tell it to, it wont do a complete image, which is a different process. If you are only doing documents photos etc, then it wont take long. I have ours set to do it automatically. I refuse to do incremental backups, had way to many fail, with so called "Good programs". XP's backup, stores files in its own format,and is damn hard to open on another PC. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1 | |||||