Cheap File Backup Program?

Mobile-D

So a couple uncles of mine run their own business. Just today they had a bit of an incident (one of their two computers got some spyware, they nearly lost the hard-drive) and I recommended they start backing up their files on an external hard-drive. Hard-drives are easy enough to find, so that's not a problem.

I need a program to do the backing up, though. It doesn't necessarily have to be automatic, but it does have to be able to access a network drive (since I'll be setting up one hard-drive for two computers). And as always, free would be nice.

Anything out there like this?

wunderbar

what OS are they running?

Mobile-D

I haven't actually looked at the machines yet (and they're not very computer literate) but I'm assuming XP.

TL DR

Cobian

electricitylikesme

Rsync is one of the best. Unison if you need synchronization. PartImage if you want to do disk imaging I'd say.

Feldorn

I'm going to bump/hijack this thread rather than make my own.

I have an external USB HDD that I want to use to backup files from my home system. All I really want to do is back up all the files in the My Documents folder (music, docs, movies, etc) and then have a backup/sync program I can run that will check the external disk and then only copy over files that are new or modified. Do any of you have any suggestions for this?

I've downloaded a program called Free File Sync from sourceforge and I'll try it out when I get the chance.

Also, I know I could just as easily do this manually, but having software for it should make it easier/more efficient.

SlightlyOffTrack

Allway Sync

I found this little gem of a program on pcmag.com. The UI is nothing to write home about, but it works like a charm and has a lot of great features. I personally use it to keep files synced across my home network.

It's free for personal use but the license does state that you're limited to copying 40,000 files in a 30 day period. I don't know if this limit is enforced in the program, as it hasn't even run close to that for me. For business use (or going over that limit) it's only $20 for the first license and $10 for each additional.

travathian

Microsoft Synctoy if you use XP, Vista or Win7

exoplasm

You could make a bat file with good ol' robocopy. It can be scheduled with Windows' Scheduled Tasks applet, or just manually double-click the bat file to run the copy. It can handle only getting new files, etc.

Feldorn

thanks for the suggestions. I'll give these all a try once I get my computer back up and running.