Simple Backups

Okay, so I forgot that I said I'd give some pointers to simple back-ups yesterday. Hope no computers failed in the meantime!

1. Large local backup

This method keeps your data in more than one place and is suitable for backing up large music & video collections, or if you're 2nd drive is big enough most drive contents. It isn't suitable for really important data as it'll be stored at the same location and so is just as susceptable to fire & theft as your main machine. This is also not suitable for a full restore of your system as it will not save important operating system information.

For this method you just need access to a folder on an external drive or another machine via a network. Personally I use an old SATA harddrive in a cheap USB caddy. Something like this.

1. Create a folder on the backup location for your backed up files to be stored in.
   
2. Download and install SyncToy.
3. Click "Create folder pair".
4. For the Left folder, browse to your local directory / drive / location you want to backup.
5. For the Right folder, browse to the remote folder you created in step 1.
6. Choose "Echo" from the choice of 3 actions.

Now if you want the whole of the directory you chose copied, just hit "Run". If you want more control over what files are copied you can click "Change options" and exclude certain folders, or only include certain types of file. Turning on "Exclude system files" may speed up your backup as well.

The first time you run the "sync" will take quite a while. The next time you want to backup your files instead of creating a new folder pair, select the existing one from the list on the left. This backup will run much faster as it will only copy changed files.

2. Small remote backup

For those files you really can't bear to lose you need to store a copy of the files remotely. I find doing this with things like FTP a real faff not to mention difficult to maintain and a problem when you're on an internet connection with capped bandwidth as you end up repeatedly uploading the same files.

Dropbox to the rescue! Dropbox is a free program that allows you to have folders on your local machine that are automatically uploaded and kept up-to-date remotely. I'm not going to write steps for how to use Dropbox as it is literally as simple as creating folders and copying files into them.

I don't just store stuff directly in my Dropbox though as I find using the built in windows photos & documents folders too convenient for that. Instead I use a SyncToy folder pairing (see above) with only a few important sub folders selected to make sure the essential data is copied into the Dropbox. This helps me stay under the 2 gig limit and means all my photos & documents etc. are still stored in one main folder instead of having to split them by importance.


Hope this helps, and let me know if any of the above doesn't work out for you or have any better ideas!