Please recommend a hard drive backup program.

[Tiger-Heli]

Wanted to get some opinions on this.

I used BackItUp by Nero last time and was fairly happy with it.

Things I liked: Files were truncated to 8.3 format, but you could see the file name and could then figure out what they were assuming you could open the created index file.

Ability to restore partial directories or even individual files by selecting from a tree type directory.

Things I disliked: If 7 disks were needed and you had an error writing disk 7, the first six perfectly good disks were now coasters, as it would make you start a new session.

Anyone have any they particularly recommend? Freeware preferred, of course.

Additional:  I particularly don't like programs that save all data in one big file as file1.bck, file2.bck, etc, so if you need to find your files without the same program, or if that file becomes unreadable, you are out of luck.
I am looking to backup about 30-40G to DVD+R maybe twice a year.  (Full backups - should cover all I need.)  (I can burn my data files to a single CD more often).

[Buddabing]

I personally use SyncBack. It has the option to write individual files or one big zip file. When backing up to a USB flash drive I use one big zip, when backing up my home computers I use individual files.

Link

Although I use the registered version, the free version works well, too.

I don't know how well SyncBack will perform for your application, since all I back up are the "My Documents" files.

[Tiger-Heli]

SyncBack doesn't look like exactly what I am looking for.

Designed to synchonize files - Not the biggest problem - if I have a blank destination, I am doing the same thing.

Requires CD's and DVD's to be formatted before writing.

Does not look like it will span DVD's (could be wrong though).  I don't necessarily need it to split files between CD's, but I don't want to have to manually break my data into 6.8 GB chunks before starting.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[2600]

I don't have a suggestion for your current backup method, but have you thought of changing your backup method as well.

I switched to using couple of USB hard drives instead of burning multiple dvd's.  Faster and a lot easier.

[miles2912]

Just back the data.  If the hd crashes re-install the os and restore the data.  I have no idea how big your data is but an external drive is your best bet - a flash drive if your data is fairly small.  Just zip it up and copy.


D-

[jcrouse]

Check out RoboCopy

John

[Havok]

I second Robocopy - very powerful software, especially since you want to be able to pull just a file out from a backup...