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[joh]

Hi,

To backup my mediafiles I have made a copy on a separate drive on my network. I have simply been using a smartlist to identify new media which I periodically copy to my backup drive. This of course doesn't take care of changes in the tags of existing files or of file deletions.

Is there functionality within MC to handle backup of the media files more effectively, or if not - could someone recommend a cheap, easy-to-use backup software?

/Olle

[jmone]

I like SycToy (free from MS).  It lets you make a relationship between two areas (eg my local drive and my SAN drive) and you can select a range of options on how you would like to syc the two.  The good thing is you can even get a preview of what will be copied, deleted, moved etc.
Thanks
Nathan

Note: I also use another prog from MS called Robocopy - it is a script based copy prog.

[KingSparta]

I like SycToy (free from MS).

I think it is called "SyncToy"

[jmone]

I think it is called "SyncToy"

I think your right!  Also there is one for XP and one for Vista.

[AustinBike]

I have 2 NAS devices, a primary and a backup.

I use Allways Sync to keep them in sync:

http://allwaysync.com/

It's freeware.  It lets you set up folder pairs and synchronize them.  The problem with MS sync toy is that it really takes a long time to generate the meta data on the source and target when you are dealing with a large number of files (400GB of music.)

Allways Sync can sync my collection in a few minutes, sync toy took close to an hour just to do the analysis (Gigabit LAN).

[rjm]

My backup strategy requires the periodic synchronization of 32 folder pairs on 4 networked computers and 4 external drives.

I evaluated every program I could find and concluded that the best by far is Super Flexible File Synchronizer (www.superflexible.com). I have been using it for several years and love it. It is easy to use, performs fast and reliably, and is very configurable.

[olarte]

I think it is called "SyncToy"

DO NOT use SyncToy, when I tried it it left havoc... free or not it is not reliable.

Try SyncbackSE it's the best $25 you'll ever spend for backup software. It's 25 for up to 5 pcs at your house. Of course you can try it for like 30 days.

It's incredibly fast and reliable, will show you what it's about to do before doing it, give you a deatiled report in html format etc.

I update my 30,000 track library in about 10-15 minutes depending on what changed.

I use Syncbackse to backup to a 2nd read only share for my kids to use, then to an external WD Mybook when I do major cleanup etc.. .then I disconnect the Mybook drive so it does not get used, or touched by surges, viruses etc. I'm thinking of keeping that drive at my office.

[benn600]

I use Syncback but get annoyed by it sometimes.  I feel like they need to cleanup the interface.  I also paid for it, though.  But it is my primary backup utility for comparing my external backup drives with my server.  Make sure to carefully examine the changed/deleted files list before accepting to look for potential corruption.

SyncToy may calculate CRC values on every file.  SyncBack can do this.  It basically ensures beyond any reasonable doubt that the files are identical.  But, it has to re-read all your data which means transferring that 400GB over your network again.  It's the safest backup method but is very time consuming.  Running it on the local computer might be quite fast because it could read the files in right from the hard drive--which means 400 MB/sec + for my server. 10 minutes for my whole music collection.  I should try that to see if it really would be that fast.  I suppose the CPU would limit it.

I have also tried Allwaysync.  I didn't like their mysterious freeware option that often said I had overused it and needed to pay for it.  By the way, there is an identical program out there with a different name.  I can't recall right now but the site is almost the same, etc.  They even told me its the same.  Their pricing is slightly different.

[joh]

Thanks for all good advice - I'll try of the tools you propose!

Regards from Sweden

OLle