External Hardrives and Backup Software...

Judas · Apr 3, 2008, 03:27 PM

OK, i've got a free agent 500gb usb 2.0 drive i've been using and while i know how to backup stuff myself.. i don't use any software.... love the drive... never ever given me a bit of a problem.. fast as hell compared to anything else i've played with.

Anyways

However for backup software, the more i've used WD's backup the more irritatingly horrible i find it.

And the more i check out the FreeAgent PRO series backup software, the more pleasing things appear.

But the question is, anyone else use external hardrive supplied backup software?

The customer will likely need the Esata varation which will be the 500gb Freeagent model i'm leaning towards atm.

mike2h · Apr 3, 2008, 04:05 PM

y not nas?

BlueMak · Apr 3, 2008, 04:37 PM

Is that latin?

Anyway, to answer your question, I have never trusted any such software to handle my files. For some reason the programs that claim to sync your files with some external (or not) solution always scare me thinking of the off chance the program will overwrite files that I don't want to or forgets/fails to do so when I want to.
So, always manualy copy the files I want to (when I have such a solution).

**temeteus82** · Apr 3, 2008, 04:41 PM

Judas get a NAS solution

Judas · Apr 3, 2008, 04:45 PM

It's not for me..

as i said.. i do the copying and backing up all myself..

this is for a customer that doesn't have a clue as how a computer works.. nor wants to go with any other solution... THEY WANT a external hardrive via usb/fire/sata connection, and a automatic backup system...

Sorry what is NAS? gotta go google that.

**temeteus82** · Apr 3, 2008, 04:46 PM

Network Area Storage....

Judas · Apr 3, 2008, 04:47 PM

a yes.... NAS... never ever referred to it as that..

that was another suggestion i was going to make...but the way thier network works, apparently "is far to complicated" for that tasks..... actually i can somewhat understand... i drives me nutz every time i have to take a look and work on these machines... let alone work the network present.... i wish i could strangle the idiot that set it up.

anyways...

NAS isn't an option.... i've already presented it to them.. no interested.. they want a external hd solution....

**dj_stick** · Apr 3, 2008, 05:12 PM

if they want to use e-sata, the "one touch backup" button on many of the consumer storage solutions won't work, use of that function need USB

Judas · Apr 3, 2008, 05:27 PM

That's where Freeagent pro works.... there software is built for all 3 .... so it doesn't matter what's going on...

i just can't find any other product out there right now that looks comparible... it's just unfortuneate that seagate doesn't make a 250gb version....

**dj_stick** · Apr 3, 2008, 05:48 PM

the freeagent with have the backup software, but the button on the actual unit won't work without a USB connection

Tipstaff · Apr 4, 2008, 12:28 AM

I've never found a piece of first party software that works fine. I've always had to go with a third party company to get what I need.

In my case I use SyncBack as it has so many damn options to chose from. It can be as simple as you want it, or you can go through the options, and you can be as specific as you want to be on how you want things to be handled when a backup occurs. Incremental backups that only copy new files, update files that have changed, and will NOT backup ones that haven't changed (I've seen some programs still copy files from a source to a back even if the damn file hasn't changed.. what a waste of time), AES encryption, FTP transfers, automatic backups of live (open) documents, if a file gets deleted you can have it automatically copy it back, if you delete a file on the source it will do so on the backup, you can backup to what they call spanned versions (a perfect way to backup databases by hour, day, week.. whatever), you can backup to multiple places at the same time (no need to have separate profiles for each location you want to backup to).. so much more.

Alternatives I'd recommend would be Second Copy and Second Backup. Both are pretty decent too, but SyncBack is just better.

mike2h · Apr 4, 2008, 01:05 AM

have you had any problems with partial &/or full restores with that app tip?

Tipstaff · Apr 4, 2008, 02:58 AM

None so far. 2 things though: 1) I don't use the freeware version, so I can't comment on how good it is, and 2) I had heard horror stories from people that used version 3 under Vista, but not a peep about that since version 3.2.18 came out. I've heard nothing bad about SE v.4 yet either.

Edit - Here's a small list of what the freeware version doesn't have that the paid SE does:

There are a great number of improvements and new features that are only available in SyncBackSE, for example:

- Copy open/locked files (XP/2003/Vista)
- Fast Backup feature that greatly reduces backup time, especially over networks
- Smart Synchronization
- Zip compression that has no limit on the number and size of files
- WinZip compatible 256-bit AES encryption
- Completely new FTP engine that supports the latest FTP features, e.g. MODE Z compression and SSL/TLS encryption
- Complete control over which files and folders to backup
- Fully Unicode so it can copy files with filenames in any language

Judas · Apr 4, 2008, 09:26 AM

i'll check that out as well...

i'm just trying to keep it as simplistic as possible as these people really don't understand anything...

i'm likely not going to backup the entire machine... just backup the critical folders such as the my documents folder...