Backup
Ok so there are many backup tools on the market and as I stated in my last post, I am cheap, but backing up data is important. As for hardware I recommend an external hard drives (USB, Network Attached, etc.), and for software I recommend using RoboCopy. Yes there is a backup utility in Windows but I do not like the fact that it pushes all your files into on uber file that requires special software to read. RoboCopy allows you to make a copy of each and every file on your computer and it is fast. You can download it as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en) and yes it will work just fine on Windows XP. When backing up I script the commands used to drive RoboCopy in a “bat” file containing the following script
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robocopy C:\ F:\backup\c\ *.* /e /b /R:2 /w:0 /PURGE /TS /FP /TEE /LOG:F:\backup\c_log.txt
shutdown -s |
The first line tells RoboCopy to copy everything from the C drive to the F:\Backup\c folder, coping subdirectories (including empty ones), coping the files in backup mode, retrying twice (with no wait between) if a file copy fails, purging files in the destination that have been removed from the source, and log everything to a text file including full paths and timestamps. On the next line I tell the computer to shutdown. Typically I just double click my bat file then leave.
To create the bat file just copy the above lines into notepad, alter the paths as appropriate for your system and save the file with a .bat extension.