Here is all the backup software mentioned so far:
- Karen's Replicator Freeware.
- SyncBack $25.00
- Acronis True Image $49.99
Any opinions?
I find that a "synching" program (rather than a "backup" program or an "imaging" program) tends to emphasize the features needed for this type of situaiton. Synching programs do not back up the files that have not changed, and you can typically select different ways of how the program checks for differences, such as file name, date, size, or an actual bit by bit comparison (which takes a long time.) I personally use file name, date and time to determine if files have changed, and I run bit by bit comparisons once in a while just to verify exact copies.
Acronis is not a "synching" program, so I don't feel that it suits this applicaiton -- it's more suited to full system backups. Karen's Rep and Syncback are synching programs. I looked at both these programs, but I chose Smartsync Pro instead (
www.smartsync.com.)
In my testing, Karen's Rep didn't offer all the features I wanted -- it is a bit too "basic" for my needs. SyncBack is a much more powerful program, but I didn't find it all that intuitive -- i.e. it seemed to require a higher learning curve. Smartsync Pro, in my personal experience, offered all the power and features I needed AND it is a very intuitive program. It's not free, but it's still quite reasonable ($35) and they offer a trial.
Smartsync also offers outstanding tech support. They typically respond to emails quickly and will readily fix issues -- I actually received an updated, fixed version of the program within 24 hours of reporting a bug.
If you're interested, the Smartsync website is
www.smartsync.com.
My backup strategy is to backup my entire "media" folder to a removeable drive on the same system, and to do a second backup to a drive on a networked system. This gives me 3 copies (one original and two copies) on 3 different drives in two different systems. Once in a while I also make another copy of the media folder to a removeable drive and take this to my parents house, where I copy it to one of THEIR backup drives. This not kept up to date all that often, so it's more of a "disaster prevention" backup. I manually run Smartsync backups on my systems every day.
Larry