Backup software recommendations?

[ralexand88]

Hello everyone,

I have a couple of 80 gig harddrives that need to be backed up to DVD. Thing is I don't want to use say 34 dvds to do this. Does anyone have any software recommendation that has good compression?

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Hello everyone,

I have a couple of 80 gig harddrives that need to be backed up to DVD. Thing is I don't want to use say 34 dvds to do this. Does anyone have any software recommendation that has good compression?

It depends on the type of data that has to be compressed. Video/music files cannot be compressed (or very very very little), while text files (.txt, .doc) can be compressed strongly.

P.S.: why don't use an additional (temporary) hard disk?

[Mercury_22]

Image for Windows 1.61

[matthewk]

Along the same lines, what's some software recommendation for backup of say all of the documents in my documents, my pictures, my music, etc., ie,opera browser favorites, and files on the desktop that are not lnks.

I'm wondering what you people use to simplify this process. Thanks

[ralexand88]

I have a little bit of everything. Mainly I need software, music and video backup. Money is an object in my case. Low on funds until wife finds herself. Still, I have only received one recommendation. Are there any others?

[Zxian]

Well... a really simple and cheap backup solution is 7-zip + DVD Burner. The former is free, while the latter can usually be found for about $40 USD.

Simply take all the files that you want to backup and compress them. Save the file with a date stamp included (i.e. 2005-11-29_My_Pictures.7z) and then burn it to a DVD (along with all the other files that you want. If the archive is too large to fit onto a single DVD, then split it at 4GB (the maximum file size for DVDs).

Like Bâshrat the Sneaky said, some files won't compress much (already compressed files - music, video, pictures), but others will.

[DigeratiPrime]

as for software, if you want image backups your best bet is Acronis True Image.

if you just want to backup individual files/folders Zxian's idea is good.

another option is cloning a hard drive, you can accomplish this through a RAID setup or again by using software such as True Image.

Also if you were more specific about how much you want to backup it would help. Do you have 80GB of data on each drive? Because 34*4.5GB= 153GB. So please be less ambigous in what you need.

[GALAracunala]

I have a little bit of everything. Mainly I need software, music and video backup. Money is an object in my case. Low on funds until wife finds herself. Still, I have only received one recommendation. Are there any others?

In my opinion, the most secure backup is a hard-drive lying on the shelf (out of computer).

The cheapest are DVD-s.

Compression? -WinRAR use comand line - example: add all *.hlp files from the current folder to the archive help.rar

"WinRAR a help *.hlp"

I have a removable rack in with i plug a backup hard drive when needed.

[Phyridean]

Also if you were more specific about how much you want to backup it would help. Do you have 80GB of data on each drive? Because 34*4.5GB= 153GB. So please be less ambigous in what you need.

DVDs are 4.7 GB last I checked, which works out to 159.8 GB (which is the same as 2x80 GB hard disks)

It seems he needs 160 GB of data backed up. To me, that screams "hard drive" as compressing and decompressing that much data will take a long time. A 200 GB hard disk is quite cheap these days ($99 US), so I'd recommend that solution.