Good free backup software?

[Oneslowz28]

Whats the best free backup software out there?

[knowledgegranted]

there are many programs that are not meant for back-up services but work really well at doing it. There use to be a program where a folder would be mirrored on two different drives so everything you put in this certain folder on your C:/ drive would be copied to the mirrored folder on your F:/ drive.

It really all depends what features you are looking for. You could even do a simple RAID configuration with the two hard drives and have two identical ones.

[Oneslowz28]

I am actually looking for something to do scheduled backup onto a 1tb external drive. Like where I can set it and forget it.

[gntlkilr]

Windows Backup in Win 7/Vista ain't too bad

[OvRiDe]

Robocopy is pretty good. I know alot of IT proffesionals that use it. Its a command line utility that you can script and then schedule. They have a GUI interface for it as well.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx

One that I like to use for a while is called Allway Sync. Its got some nice features for keeping dirs synced up.

http://allwaysync.com/

Also check out RichCopy...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx

[Oneslowz28]

Thanks OvRiDe. You da man!!

[slaveofconvention]

OK, so this is a LONG way from free, but thought I'd mention it as it's one of the best purchases I've made in a long time.

Microsoft Windows Home Server - o/s alone is around $100 but it's basically a "home" edition of server 2003 - it'll run on older hardware with no real problems - the min spec is very reasonable. The things I like about it most are:

1. Fully automatic incremental daily backups of all computers connected to the network
2. Drive extender - when you're running out of hard disk space, you just add another drive and it adds it to the storage "pool" immediately - no rebuilding arrays, no worrying about different capacity drives - it doesn't care.
3. Folder duplication. If you want a double-backup you can set it to duplicate - this means that as well as a backup of your computer on the server, it'll make sure there are copies of the files on two different physical disks within the server so if one fails, you're still set.
4. Backup browsing - you don't have to restore a backup to access it, you can select a backup from any date and open it - it'll appear on your local PC as a networked drive and you can then browse as if it were just another disk
5. Headless operation - pretty much everything you ever need to do can be done over the network via a network interface - the server itself needs no monitor, keyboard or mouse.
6. Internal/external drives - it doesn;t care if you're using IDE, SATA, SATAII, USB, Firewire or any combination of them - it treats them all as one huge drive
7. Full remote access without a static IP or messing around with Dynamic DNS servers - MS gives you a subdomain on homeserver.com which connects to your server - your server updates MS any time your IP address changes. In 2 years of having this, I've ONCE been unable to get access remotely, and I'm pretty sure that was my router as a quick call to the wife fixed it.
8. Duplication avoidance - it'll detect if several computers have the same file(s) on them and only backup one copy of them - for example, if you have the same OS on 2 or more PC's, it'll back up one completely, then refer to that backup instead of backing up the other two completely - it'll still back up any differences but it avoids unneccesary duplication - in the event of a restore/restore browse, it'll pick up all the bits it needs from different backups to make it look like a single backup - utterly transparent
9. Huge online support via forums at http://www.wegotserved.com/ - MS sells it as OEM only so they don't really support it much :s
10. Lots of add-ins, again at http://www.wegotserved.com/ - customise the system to suit your needs better

The only negatives I can think of are that the duplication requires twice the space - there's no RAID 5 cleverness - 100GB duplicated will take up a full 200GB - and you're limited to 10 client PCs - enough for most people but I have hit the limit a couple of times. Win 7 isn't officially supported yet, but you can be damned sure it soon will be, and there are hacks available already to make it work.

Assuming the availability of spare parts, you could realistically have this up and running for like, $120 and then you can expand it in the future if and when you need to...

For home/small business use (altho MS probably doesn't want it used for business) I can't recommend it enough...

[Liquid_Scope_99]

very cool slave thanks that sounds like a plan too me

[slaveofconvention]

For the record, I've been using it for about 2 years now - had to do one reinstall back before they fixed a load of bugs with powerpack1 - now it seems nice n stable and I'm confident enough to have nearly 4TB over a range of 10 different sized HD's between 160GB and 1TB

[Airbozo]

For the record, I've been using it for about 2 years now - had to do one reinstall back before they fixed a load of bugs with powerpack1 - now it seems nice n stable and I'm confident enough to have nearly 4TB over a range of 10 different sized HD's between 160GB and 1TB

I am also setting up a home server. Mainly for backups and media streaming.

From the rumor mill I heard that the main reason powerpack2 was delayed was to add Windows 7 support. They expect PP2 to be out in January...