Free Backup Software (XP SP2)

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I am after some free backup software for my technophobic sister who just wants to double click an icon on the desktop and have her documents folder backed up to memory stick. She only turns the PC on every few days so she doesn’t need fancy bells and whistles.

Any recommendations? Thanks

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A BATch file would be a trivial solution, perhaps using ROBOCOPY.

But there are several general design questions which spring to mind, like what should happen to previous backups – kept or overwritten? Do you want the USB Flash Drive to mirror the current contents of the My Documents folder, or should items deleted from the hard disk still stay on the USB Flash Drive? Do you want to keep old versions of documents (as far as possible) as well as their current version? What are the relative sizes of My Documents and the USB Flash Drive, and thus is there any need for compression or ZIPping on the USB Flash Drive? Who would be doing any recovery needed, and how would they do it? And so on!

John

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For something quite simple, you might find something like Panic Over will suffice. Note that, although many think of “My Documents” as their only “unique” personal collection, there are other personalized items to consider, like

Outlook Express emails
Outlook Express email addresses
Internet Explorer Favourites

PanicOver does all of these as well as My Documents. It’s built for Win 9x/ME but should be fine for XP.

Alan

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You may want to look at Karen’s Replicator found at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp%5B/url%5D It can sync in one or both directions and is fairly fast. The only quirk is if a file is open it will not back it up. When I use it for my laptop to my external HD I must remember to close Outlook first.

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