Backup Software

[Methos]

My trial version of Memeo Backup just ran out and I'm planning on purchasing some sort of backup software. I'm just not sure which is the best one.

Memeo is nice as it's one of those install and forget. It always runs in the background and I don't have to do anything. The only problem is it doesn't backup my OS.

What out there is good and easy to use? I prefer the install and forget ones, as I'm more prone to stay updated if I don't have to do anything to keep it running.

 

[AnsonMage]

Personally I prefer hardware backup such as RAID 1. This is probably more expensive and too technical for most people however and it doesn't protect against a variety of things, rather it protects against hardware failure.

As for backup, I've had success with Norton Ghost which we use at my work. We've never had a problem that we couldn't just overwrite by using the ghost images we made when we initially installed the OS. Sure, you lose work that way, but hell, it fixed the problem. We use a lot of network drives to keep work on so if you do need to revert, you won't lose anything important (hopefully). You can also make several images to work from, but that takes up more storage space.

 

[taper]

RAID is nice, but I highly recommend an external hard drive that you keep in a firebox, if not offsite. It's rare, but definitely possible for a complete system smoke, and software or RAID won't protect against that. To me, some data like my digital pictures is priceless, and spending $100-200 on proper backups is absolutely worth it. I think external drives like Seagate/Maxtor MyBooks have their own backup software, and it'd probably be cheaper than a stand-alone. If nothing else, get a USB/eSATA external drive depending on what ports your PC has, and copy the folders manually. If you move everything into one master folder like My Documents a couple of clicks will do all the work, then you just wait for the transfer.

 

[Methos]

I have a MyBook drive which came with the trival version of Memeo. I'm just debating on whether to purchase Memeo, or go with something else.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Please, hopefully there are more.