Installing a back up drive

[mcopinger]

I just built a computer for a co-worker and bought a hard drive that was a little small (320 gigs). After installing all my base programs and drivers I went to back up the system and it dawned on me that I did not portion the drive so i even could set up a back up! so I'm taking the opertunity to save a little bit of that hard drive space. I want to buy a 40gig hard drive and set it up as the back up as well as keep some of my admin files hidden in that (over clock programs and what not - incase i ever need to tweek it for her). can someone give me the how to on this? or if anyone knows a good link I'd apperciate it!

THANKS EVERYONE!

 

[sminlal]

Backing things up to another partition on the same drive (which I assume was your original plan) is a terrible idea. If the drive dies, your backups are gone too.

Similarly, backing things up to a second drive in the same system, while better than the same drive, is still far from ideal since the backups are at the same risks that the system is at risk for - getting knocked over, suffering a power surge, being stolen, etc. etc. etc.

The best backup is an external hard drive that's disconnected from the system when not in use and stored in a separate location. Even better is two drives that are alternated with one stored offsite.

Any external drive will work just fine. The real questions aren't so much how to connect the drive (you basically just plug it in, and on the first use you may need to partition and format it) as what backup software to use and how to run it.

 

[aravindtj]

mcopinger,

It is good to have another hard disk for backup drive . It will give you good security as well as performance to your system than backing up to the same hard disk partition.

Not sure, which OS you are using and your backup criteria.

Anyway, if you wish to simply backup your files alone as archive, then you can use any of the freely available file sync applications. If you want to keep multiple version of the files, then you need to choose a good backup application and choose the files/folder to backup to.

Just search for best onsite backup software and try them out which may best suite you.
--
Aravind
http://storegrid.vembu.com