PC Hard drive backups (8 posts)

Anonymous Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 3 years, 5 months ago

I have three PCs that I would like to backup on a regular basis. A friend has suggested a maxtor 250GB portable harddrive for the job. Is this correct and if so then what is the recommended process?

Chris Burrage Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 12 years, 5 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

Are they networked? If so, use a NAS server (networked attached storage) just Google it. The benefit over a normal removable drive is it plugs into your router, so is accessible by all PC's without unplugging, and has its own limited OS so can run your backup process itself. You can do other stuff like remote access to your files even if the PC's are off. You log onto it (generally) via a web browser and configure it as required.

Chris B

ALAN ROSCOE Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 12 years, 5 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

Google for "backup software" and pick what you can afford. Incremental backups are my preference, i.e. only updated data is backed up, not the whole box and dice each time. Personally I use Symantec's Ghost software and it works fine. DriveCopy's another good (inexpensive) one too.

vikki kerrington Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 12 years, 5 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

Any external hard drive will work fine for backups. If you are going backup all 3 PCs to one external drive, I would suggest either partitioning (my preference) the external or make a folder for each PC and name to keep track.

The external is a usb drive, so you can copy/paste files to it or drag and drop. The external works like any other hard drive. How you get the data there is up to you. There is software that will do backups for you, however I find it just as easy to copy/paste.

Another suggestion is to aquire an imaging program such as Acronis True Image. I suggest Acronis because it will make an image to an external and also restore from the external drive. I found Ghost does NOT like external drives. Imaging has saved me a lot of grief over the years. This software works well with either Vista or Win XP.

Hope this helps, good luck

T. J. Steenland Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 4 years, 7 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

I have three SCSI hard drives on my home office PC:

Drive 0: 137 GB Drive 1: 68 GB Drive 0: Partitioned as follows: C: 68

T. J. Steenland Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 4 years, 7 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

I use Win XP Pro OS. I have 3 SCSI hard drives:

Drive 0: 137 GB Partition C: 68 GB (Boot drive) D: 68 GB Drive 1: E: 68 GB Drive 2: F: 68 GB

Use Norton Ghost to backup C to E AND D to F. Not sure of drive letters, since away from home office. If PCs total 250 GB a system like this should work.Would have to partition 250 GB into three paritions corresponding to each of your fixed hard drives. Use Partition Magic or Partition Commander to partition portable hard drive. I try to do this on a weekly basis. Hope this helps.

Matt Posted 3 years, 5 months ago Joined: 12 years, 5 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

G'day,

How frequently do you want to run your backups and do you want to keep multiple copies?

As for a recommended process, some units come with their own back-up software, others don't. Nero has a version of data back-up but I have found that one quite cumbersome to recover data as it use a propietary format.

There is a, IMO, good free software that use the windows NTBackup process (so it is compatible with all current windows versions) to perform the backup that is very easy to use and can be set to run automatically if needed. The website is http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Cheers Matt

ALAN ROSCOE Posted 3 years, 4 months ago Joined: 12 years, 5 months ago

Re: PC Hard drive backups

Re. T. J. Steenland's reply. If you're using any flavour of Vista, Partition Magic won't work. Dunno about Partition Commander, haven't used it.

PC Hard drive backups (8 posts)

PC Hard drive backups (8 posts)

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