An alternative to online backup ?
I have thought of the idea of having a second backup in case the Seagate terabyte external hard drive which I normally use dies on me for some reason, which is where I have all my backups videos and music files. I am thinking of buying another Seagate terabyte external hard drive and after making backups in it, I will seal it in a metal box in case of fire or theft. Is this a better idea to online backup which is expensive and open to hacking? Okay, let us call this Drive 2 and we will call the external desktop drive that I have constantly plugged in my computer which I normally use for all my backups videos and music files, Drive 1. I only make a backup of my C drive and my documents but I have no videos or music files in my C drive. I place these 2 backups in my Acronis secure zone partition on drive 1. I do not make backups of my videos for I assume it will take ages to make since they occupy lots of memory space. I would like to know the easiest way to copy the stuff using my Acronis 2011 program I have in drive 1 onto drive 2 so that when I have made changes to any of my backups or videos or music files, I will make those corresponding changes in drive 2. Is it possible to plug in 2 x 1 terabyte Seagate external hard drives at the back USB ports of my computer which has an i3 processor ? Would it be easiest to make a clone of drive 1 and then dump it on drive 2 with both plugged in? Or would it be easiest to use a type of backup ? Please advise.
I would just add that a "metal box" will do nothing to protect a hard drive from fire. You would need to use a fire-proof box or safe rated for data media (these are generally more expensive and heavy than paper-rated boxes/safes).
Thank you Pat and mudcrab for your replies. Much appreciated.
Please tell me where to download the synchronization software? Is it free?
So you have 1 USB backup disk at home and you have another one at the office.
Do you have to plug in both USB terabyte external hard drives to my computer at the same time for your syn. Software to work or can you make one backup on one drive and then LATER, plug in the other one and have the software synchronize both?
Do you use incremental or differential backup method ?
What online backup service do you consider reliable and is it free?
Thank you.
ATI 2012 comes with decent synchronization capabilities.
Free options include SyncToy from Microsoft, Karen's replicator, SyncBack (which I use the paid-for version of) etc... Typically they sync to another disk, although some like Syncback can sync to a variety of destinations. Syncback allows you to keep version of files and nice retention rules.
Paid for versions include SYncback, Goodsync, Mirrorfolders and others...
You can create 2 "syncs", one for each disk.
Incremental/differential doesn't apply to sync. For my system backup, I use incremental backups, but my last full is never too old for me that I couldn't go back to it. It is much easier to follow this rule when your content is taken care of by sync. I use sync for all my content because I don't like putting my backup in a proprietary container (although ATI allows you to put it in ZIP which is pretty open), and I think it is useless to put not-changing compressed file formats like videos, pictures, music in any kind of container: I prefer a flat file mirror..
Wrt online backups, you have free options like microsoft live mesh, which allows you sync to Skydrive, and other options. ACronis offers its own online backup. I use iDrive.com because they don't count older versions and deleted files against your space quota.