Recommended backup external for notebooks?

[GJSNeptune]

Girlfriend's laptop was stolen (long story, few people got that thread locked ), and her uncle has already ordered her a new Dell Inspiron 1520. It's pink and she can't bear the excitement.

It's Vista Home Premium, which may become a problem at work. I haven't even used Vista yet. So far I've read that Office 2003 works on it, which is good. We could always get her an XP copy if she really feels it'd be better.

She uses her laptop for school and work, so her work is very important. Fortunately she had hard copies and/or backups of a lot of the work she lost, but with her new laptop I'd like to get her an external hard drive to back up her work regularly.

I've never used an external hard drive. Do you need to buy software to make regular backups with it? What software do you guys recommend? I'd like to make weekly (at most) backups. Can backup software only copy over new files?

Thanks.

 

[Tekara]

You can buy software for that like acronis or you can do like I do and use a linux boot cd to use partimage.

Another good alternative is to use something like the google fs to save your work onto so that it's accessible via the internet.

 

[GJSNeptune]

Well she's getting some online backup storage through Dell, but I'd still like to have an external.

 

[Haven]

There is a software program from Microsoft, called SyncToy. You can setup SyncToy to sync two directories. I do this to back up my iTunes Music directory. I create a folder pair of c:\users\ianshot\music\ to g:\users\ianshot\music, after that I just hit Run, and off it goes.

 

[GJSNeptune]

Nice, and it's free. Can it be set to automatic?

 

[DamienThorn]

Nice, and it's free. Can it be set to automatic?

Synctoy can be set up via the windows scheduler to run at a predetermined time - you just need to teach your girlfriend to push a couple buttons and it will back up whatever it is that needs to be backed up.

As for the external drive, if you can afford the bit of extra cash I'd highly recommend getting an enclosure that you can just plug into the home router - that way she'll never have to actually plug it in, and you'll have some easy-access network storage to boot.

 

[GJSNeptune]

As for the external drive, if you can afford the bit of extra cash I'd highly recommend getting an enclosure that you can just plug into the home router - that way she'll never have to actually plug it in, and you'll have some easy-access network storage to boot.

Hmm. I'll think about it.

 

[Rube]

For my less technically challenged friends, I usually recommend the Maxtor OneTouch external drives. It will backup either on a schedule or manually by pressing a big silver button on the front of the drive. It also only backs up changed files. I believe it uses a customized version of Dantz Retrospect. (Easy to restore from too as it does file based copies, no bkf compressed files that you have to "restore" from.) It has enough options for the more tech savvy user too. I think you can find a 200GB for like $90.