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Backing Up

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by elwin9

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What is a good method or product for backing up automaticlly everyday. I wanted to use two CD's or DVD's one each day backing up the same files. Swapping only the one disk each day. Program like MYOB where most of the files dont change except the data file and any new forms that are created. Is there anything that will replace and add only the files that are new.

Thanks

7 replies

by rindi1

Any Backup Software can be setup to backup changed data only (usually there are different backup sets, one of them called "differential Backup"). The backup uses the archive bit attribute of the file tells the program it hasn't been backed up yet. Once it has been backed up, the backup program resets that archive bit.

by vinnyd

What you trying to do with only changed files is a bad idea on only 2 backup media!

Any backup program can do a "changed only" backup. That is called incremental backups.

An Incremental backup needs to have a FULL Backup once each backup cycle.

So a normal Incremental backup is 1 Full and Four days of incremental. There must always be a Full backup because some files may not change for weeks. With an Incremental only the changed files are backed up. If you do not have a full backup you will lose files.

With a CD or DVD rewriteable disk you should backup of all the files that can fit on the 1 disk.

Like the accounting system should be backed up everytime it gets used.

Wordprocessing and speadsheet docs can be backed up every other day or only once per week.

The frequency of the backups you do are determined by how much work you can afford to do over if you have to restore.

Like if you use MYOB every day, and backup once per week, the worst case if you have to restore from a week ago and do 1 whole weeks work over again!

by ozi eagle

Hi,

A bit of my backup philosophy first.
With my business clients I recommend that they create a folder called CRITICAL and keep all their "critical" information in this folder, eg MYOB data. Then for backup purposes only this folder needs to be backed up.
Also I strongly recommend one CD, diskette etc per working day, for backing up. Some authorities also recommend a weekly and monthly disk as well.
Remember, that the data is the most valuable item in (on) your computer! (for a business). To recreate it can cost a fortune, compared to the cost of, say 10 CDs at about $1-2 each.

Now to your specific question:
You can download and use Back2Zip, from avatarsoft.com. You can run it for free, but it will consisitently pop up a message requesting you to purchase, only $US25. Limitations, from my point of view, is that it will only allow you to select folders to be backed up, not files.

Another program that I'm starting to use is Winbackup, from (I think) LUIutilities.com. A more flexible program.

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