Hey folks I have two hard drives, both more than big enough for my needs so I intend to just use one to backup all my personal files. I can't be bothered setting up RAID, I'd prefer a software solution that would just copy all the (new/changed) files from one folder/list of folders to another drive once or twice a week. On Linux, I'd use a combination of rsync and cron. Are there any (free) windows tools out there?
To clarify, RAID is not a backup solution. RAID is intended to maximise uptime by attempting to negate the down time caused by hard drive hardware failure. It should not be relied upon to keep data safe in the long term because it won't.
Robocopy - Robust file copy for windows - just write a script for it and schedule it daily. Is not very hard at all but can help you if you need . edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy Robocopy supports multithreaded file copy too from windows 7/server 2008 r2 onwards which means it can be quite fast.
This looks perfect---the other recommendations look good, but are probably overkill for my single machine needs. Thanks guys
Problem with synctoy is it's not very good and hasn't been developed further since 2009. Widespread reports that it loses files from the ORIGINAL folder and it isn't as fast as robocopy as it doesnt do multithreaded copy. This guy sums it up quite well - http://mattbramer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/robocopy-vs-synctoy.html and if you aren't happy writing a script you can get a gui that will do it for you http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/query/dd547088
Hmm. Suddenly I'm beginning to rethink my "don't bother reinstalling linux, windows is good enough these days..." decision during the summer. You'd think that in 2012 it would be simple (ie built in to windows) to do this kind of thing.
robocopy is built into windows! been about since nt 4.0 and has been part of the standard install since windows vista. Is just a command line utility rather than an app. Come on linux man command line is fun
