External Back Up,

[vex]

We are getting to the point that my (old) desktop and wifey's laptop could do with backing up.

Both have spare USB ports and I was thinking of just getting a large-ish external HD and storing our data on that.

Any recommendation and simple software that we could use?

[Tripps]

vex said:

We are getting to the point that my (old) desktop and wifey's laptop could do with backing up. Both have spare USB ports and I was thinking of just getting a large-ish external HD and storing our data on that. Any recommendation and simple software that we could use?

Bought a 300GB Maxtor OneTouch II a few weeks back and have been very impressed with it.

Come with a lite version of Dantaz Retrospect, but don't use it myself as I have in-house backup software.

Cost around £180 inc. as I recall and go down to around 80GB in size.

[SlidingSideways]

The backup software included Win98 onwards (I think, it's certainly in Win2K and XP) is fairly good. Lets you select which folders you want to back up and a location to store the backup file (unlike previous versions where it would only accept a tape drive).
Once you've done a full backup, you can then just do incrementals after that to keep the data volumes down.

[Plotloss]

If the desktop and laptop are USB 1.1 it will take an age depending on the volume of data...

[Tripps]

Plotloss said:

If the desktop and laptop are USB 1.1 it will take an age depending on the volume of data...

Even with USB 2.0 it takes longer than you expect, the drive is a 7200rpm one too...

I've just set up their OneTouch button to call my software and press it when I leave the office and it carries on happily overnight.