jerryc41 wrote:
I'm almost embarrassed to be asking this question, but here goes.
A friend has never backed up anything on his desktop, and he asked me what to do. I told him what I do. I backup seven folders SyncBackSE and several external drives. He asked, "What about all your other folders?" Good question.
I'm satisfied with those seven folders because they're the important ones. The other dozen or so folders I could live without. Aside from cloning the hard drive every other day, what's the best way to back up an entire D drive or even the entire computer? I don't know how large his data drive is, but he would need at least two of the same size drives to use as backups.
What about automatic backups? I decide when to run SyncBack manually.
I'm almost embarrassed to be asking this question,... (
show quote)
I use ROBOCOPY in scripts... and it is set to only record changes/updates (and purges deletions on all BUT 1 drive) and backup these folders:
C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Desktop to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Apple\MobileSync\Backup to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Music to 4 different drives (just iTunes here)
C:\Users\USERNAME\Pictures (assortment of scan results and downloaded files) to 4 different drives
C:\__XPS17-Install\ to 4 different drives (installation software and notes when software added)
C:\_Links-w_Batch_Files to 4 different drives
C:\_UTILITY to 4 different drives
E:\MUSIC to 4 different drives (nearly 200 Gb, where all the music I edit, add play lists, and put together thumb drives for cars)
E:\PICTURES to 4 different drives (nearly 400 Gb in 71,000 files, this is where pictures from my, and my wife and daughter's, cameras)
3 of the above 4 drives are external... 2 USB attached and 1 via our LAN/WiFi
One of these 4 drives gets swapped out with one in the bank safe deposit...
I do something like the above to backup a desktop and 2 laptops on a regular basis. I used to have the all run overnight/automatically but that has stopped (for now) with the change-out of some hardware.