Backup systems/software?

Jokke

Hi all.

I'm thinking of doing my close-to-annual spring cleaning reformat of my computer.

However, I've usually backed up my important stuffs to a HDD, which is okay, but takes time, and it gets quite messy with previous backups. In addition to that, I'm doing it manually, which means I also have to put everything back manually.
I'm obviously taking the path of most resistance here, so I was wondering if you bright minds could recommend an easier way, either in form of software or service that'll make this an easier and more streamlined.
The furthest I've ventured away from my manual drag-and-drop approach is the built in Windows backup tool, but I either did something wrong or the software didn't work as intended, because it didn't back up as it should have.

All thoughts are welcome.

RyanMM

I use Acronis for all my clients. I set up a daily differential backup, with a new full backup every 7 days, and depending on how large their external is compared to their internals, anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks of backup sets before old ones are deleted.

Acronis backs up the system as an image, so it's faster than file-based backups, and because it requires a solid partition table and a lack of physical bad sectors to run, it's the single best canary in the coal mine to alert you to any problems with your hard drive. Acronis will start failing backups (and bugging you about it) long before the drive is on the brink of a failure that it can't be recovered from.

It's gotten a little feature-bloated in recent years, and it's not the easiest to configure, but I haven't found anything better. Macrium, DIXML, none of the other options come close.

And Windows backup is fucking horrible. Absolutely useless.

Linc

I simply store everything but my iTunes library in my Dropbox folder.

Jokke

Does Acronis back up my entire computer, or only the parts I've selected?

So let's say I wanna back up my documents, movies, music, photos and savegames not stored in a cloud. I use Acronis to backup only those things, and do a complete reformat? Do I just load up the image, and everything I've selected will go back to it's original place? Will it recognize the "new" system?

RyanMM

Acronis CAN do file-based backup, but file-based backup is always significantly slow. What you can do is do a full drive backup, and then only restore specific files.

Since you only save a couple dozen gigabytes by skipping the system and program files folder, the speed penalty for doing a file-based backup almost always washes out the time saved by backing up a smaller amount of data.

Since you're doing a wipe/clean install, one thing that may be easier and free is using the Windows Easy Transfer tool.

If you want me to document my recommend process for that, let me know.

ardichoke

SpiderOak - Fully encrypted, zero-knowledge policy, backup to the cloud with Dropbox-like syncing features. Very useful. I even wrote a post about it which @primesuspect made into an article, though that was geared toward using it to sync save games between computers.

CrashPlan - Automatic file-based backup. The software is free. They offer a paid-for service that lets you back up to their servers (this is how they make their money). The cool thing is that you can also use the software to back up to other computers you own, if you have multiple computers, thus negating the need to pay for storage from them. You can also do backups to a friends computer as well (your friend can give you a code which will grant you access to a certain amount of space on one or more of their computers to backup to). Everything is encrypted so only you can access the data. This service is super useful and I use it to back up my and my fiancee's data.

primesuspect

I use, and love, CrashPlan

QCH

Crashplan... It will be coming with File Syncing in their next version...