Hard drive mirroring?

[xteeejx]

Hi,

Does anybody know of a good hard drive morroring tool?  I'm not even sure that's the right name, but I just ordered two 200gb drives thinking I would set up a raid on my mame machine to backup my music, roms, artwork, etc. but now I'm thinking I really dont need a raid since I don't care about backing up programs and I'd rather not deal with the setup if I don't have to.  I'd just like a tool that could check the files in a given directory every day or two and copy any recently updated files to another drive.  A restore feature would also be nice.

Thanks!
-TJ

[chemame]

After a few years of sporadic data loss, I got smart and started using No Hands Backup.

Here's the installer for the version I use (this version is from when NHB was free software). It's old, but still quite adequate. I use it on W2K, and I know of several people that use it on WXP.

www.crazybaldman.com/stuff/no_hands_backup_2.5b5.exe

There are newer versions, but his software is no longer free, so if you want a newer version, try out his 30 day demo, and you may be thrilled to register it for only $16. http://www.nhbackup.com/

(Note: I am not connected with the author of this software in any way other than that I use his software. Also, I do not believe I am violating any copyrights by posting this free software for download. If you are the lawful owner of this software copyright, and wish me to remove this download, please advise me via email, you can email "art" at the above domain. Thanks!)

Chemame

[zaphod]

Another option, albeit verrrry unglamorous.  My Windows drive gets Ghosted but I also have a few key directories that I back up nightly, using just a scheduled DOS batch program.  Plain old XCOPY works great.  With the proper switches it will do exactly what you are asking. 

An example of the Xcopy command, with the switches you'd need:
xcopy <from dir> <backup_dir> /s /k /d /y

For me, it works great and runs in the middle of the night.  The amount of data that changes daily is relatively small so the jobs run quite fast.

[Brad]

Another option, albeit verrrry unglamorous.  My Windows drive gets Ghosted but I also have a few key directories that I back up nightly, using just a scheduled DOS batch program.  Plain old XCOPY works great.  With the proper switches it will do exactly what you are asking. 

An example of the Xcopy command, with the switches you'd need:
xcopy <from dir> <backup_dir> /s /k /d /y

For me, it works great and runs in the middle of the night.  The amount of data that changes daily is relatively small so the jobs run quite fast.

I do exactly the same and it's never let me down. My backup copies to a 2nd hard drive and to another PC over my wireless network.

Brad

[Taborious]

RAID1 or RAID0+1 you would need a raid controller. Using a software raid system requires your CPU to run the disk access slowing your system down. Taking your setup (2) 200gb drives you would set them up as a raid1 mirrored set and an OS; windows probably, would simply see this as a single 200gb drive. each write gets sent to each drive so both drives are duplicates/mirrors of each other. If one drive fails the raid controller simply points itself to the second drive. If you don't have alerts or drive lights you might not even realize that you have a drive failure. That is what mirroring is for complete hard drive redudancy.

Nice option as you don;t need to check backups have completed or did I back that up, you get the picture...

[zvar]

Personally I use Always Sync.
It's located at http://www.alwayssync.com/
Free for non-commercial use (although how it tells is by the amount of data synced, so if you are moving large amounts of data around it may want you to pay for it.)
No spyware included (according to ad-aware and spybot) and fairly easy to use.

Steven

[xteeejx]

Just got the drives in the mail yesterday,  I'm gonna try a couple of these out, thanks a lot guys.  By the way, do any of these programs, compress the backed-up data?

Thanks
-TJ

[krick]

Another option, albeit verrrry unglamorous.  My Windows drive gets Ghosted but I also have a few key directories that I back up nightly, using just a scheduled DOS batch program.  Plain old XCOPY works great.  With the proper switches it will do exactly what you are asking. 

An example of the Xcopy command, with the switches you'd need:
xcopy <from dir> <backup_dir> /s /k /d /y

For me, it works great and runs in the middle of the night.  The amount of data that changes daily is relatively small so the jobs run quite fast.

XXCOPY is better and much more flexible than XCOPY...
http://www.xxcopy.com/

It's unbelievably powerful.

[darthbane2k]

this thread prompted me to buy a drive.
I put it in my master pc mobile rack and installed acronis image/ghosting software on the arcade pc. I ghosted the C:drive to an image file and sent that file across my wireless network to my backup hdd - now im backing up the G: drive on the arcade PC which holds all the emus and roms - this is taking me ages! Im backing up to the new drive wirelessly and its been near 7 hours so far with another 6 to go!

My poor arcade PC has been on all night and all day - marquee light cant be independantly switched off!! But I managed to switch the monitor off.

Am I harming my poor arcade PC??!!

[zaphod]

Am I harming my poor arcade PC??!!

No.  Why would using your PC be 'harming it?'

[darthbane2k]

Am I harming my poor arcade PC??!!

No.  Why would using your PC be 'harming it?'

 

after 12 ---smurfing--- hours of backing up to an image wirelessly, acronis craps out on me at 99% because of some damn hidden norton recycler temp file on my drive. So I have to run my arcade PC for another 12 hours just to attempt to backup again.

Is there not a faster, more reliable solution.
Im SERIOUSLY thinking of cutting and pasting folders one by one using explorer.

[krick]

after 12 ---smurfing--- hours of backing up to an image wirelessly, acronis craps out on me at 99% because of some damn hidden norton recycler temp file on my drive. So I have to run my arcade PC for another 12 hours just to attempt to backup again.

Is there not a faster, more reliable solution.
Im SERIOUSLY thinking of cutting and pasting folders one by one using explorer.

When will people learn that Norton/Symantec is EVIL?

XXCOPY is the way to go if you want to backup folders.

[daywane]

I have had PC's on for weels at a time.
I think I went 3 months once