Backup Solutions

[Jeff Mottle]

Just thought I'd let everyone know about a small but powerful app I have been testing for the last month to do my daily backups and just purchased today. As I know most of you do backup directly to disk I think you will find this to be a pretty nice app.

 

It's called Backup Magic http://www.moonsoftware.com/bmagic.asp

 

It bascially does a file copy of your files and you can do drive mirroring, incrmental backups (something most file copy utilities can't do) as well as full backups (non-locked files only).

 

I have mine set up to do daily incrmental file backups to an external HD using the archive flags in windows and a weekly full backup to a single directory where everythign is overwritten each week to create a single backup off all of my files.

 

It also have the ability to do dynamic directoty naming. So each day the directory structure of my changed files will appear under a folder names by the current date and time.

 

The scheduling is all run from windows scheduler (as the app can be called from a command line) and you can also have the program run apps before and after the backup. In my case I have a batch file that calls a few scripts to close oulook and kill any resident processes, do the backup, then re-open Outllok again once it's done. You could also call a program to shutdown windows once it's done.

 

Anyway I've tested about a dozen app like this over the past year and none have been as good or reliable as this one, and for $20, you can't go wrong. If you want a very reliable and powerful set and forget backup app...take a look at this one!

[Greg Hess]

Jeff,

 

Thanks much for the link! I'm always on the outlook for cheap effective programs .

 

Not to hijack the thread...but here's a few of the ones I've found useful.

 

Diagnostic:

 

1) Memtest

www.memtest86.com

(Used to diagnose memory)

 

2) Sisoft Sandra

www.sisoftware.co.uk

(Stress testing/System Diag)

 

3) 3dmark 2001 SE

www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark2001.shtml

(Stress Testing/Video Diag)

 

Repair/Recovery:

 

1) File Recovery 2000 Pro

www.bitmart.net/r2k.shtml

(Restoring Lost Files)

 

2) Spinrite

www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

(Repairing Bad Sectors)

 

3) Norton Ghost

www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

(Cloning Drives, Saving a Failing Drive, Image Backup)

 

4) Partion Magic

www.powerquest.com

(Moving/Recovering/Changing Partions)

 

There is more, but thats all I can think of right now.

 

Quick note on these...File Recovery 2000 Pro has recovered over 26 gigabytes of lost data so far this year. Including one drive that was formated AND repartioned.

[Jennifer]

Hi,

 

Backup Magic and Restorer look like great products.

 

One thing that I use all the time is called FileSync from FileWare. It allows you to specify a date range and filter, and I use it to backup my recent work to a USB harddrive when going between home and work computers. I also use it to quickly copy my student's work from their disks to my drive.

 

Diskeeper for automated defragmentation is another useful utility. Executive Software.

 

Partition Magic is an essential, also.

 

[xgarcia]

I've been using PerfectDisk 6.0 for defragmenting. It will do "smart placement" defrag - places files on the disk platters according to frequency of use (read: access files faster). Also it will defragment boot files before windows loads. Check out the demo.