I haven't forgotten! It has taken a lot of time to 'test' out two or three pieces of software. I also made the mistake of running THREE backups at the same time (on different days of the week, of course!), and the result was that my 1TB external drive filled up so fast that it got to a point where it could take no more and gave up trying. Bummer!
All is back to normal after I deleted the backups I no longer required. Hopefully the programme I have selected to use will now pick up where it left off and continue to do my backups on a Sunday without whingeing again. I will tell you which one I settled on in a moment.
My intent was to point you at a FREE backup programme that would do the necessary tasks for you, one which you could download, install, schedule and forget about. The good news is that there is such a beast - two, actually! The ones I've been testing are:
- Acronis True Image Home 2010 - (paid version $49.99 - WinXP, WinVista, Win7)
- Genie-Soft Genie Backup Manager - (paid version €39.95 - WinXP, WinVista, Win7)
- GoodSync (from the RoboForm stable) - (paid version $29.95 - WinXP, WinVista, Win7)
- Microsoft SyncToy - (FREE - make sure you choose the right download - 32-bit or 64-bit - WinXP, WinVista, Win7)
- Karen Kenworthy's Replicator - (FREE - I've been using her software for years - WinXP, WinVista, Win7)
Those were MY choices, but there are several out there that you can still take a look at. I will briefly discuss the two free ones in the next post.
I have elected to go with True Image for several reasons, not least of all because I paid for the damn thing. It was a heavily discounted offer and after a bit of research amongst the tech-smart guys on the web it appeared to be a wise choice. It may yet turn out to be a lemon, not least of all because Acronis seem to be building an appalling reputation for after-sales service.
We shall see ...
