In the window that comes up, right-click on the drive labeled “C: ” and click Properties. You’ll see a window that looks like the image to the right. The rule of thumb when buying a backup drive is to buy one with twice the amount you really need; your storage needs will inevitably grow over time. Double the number next to “Used Space” — that’s how much you need. If you’re using: Buy an external storage drive with this much capacity 250GB or less 500GB 251 – 500GB 1TB 501 – 1,024GB 2TB 1,025 – 1,500GB 3TB Note there are two kinds of external hard drives: desktop and portable. Desktop: stationary drives designed to sit on a desk; powered by an external AC adapter.
Portable: smaller profile drives; powered by the USB cable you’ll use to connect to your computer. Buy one of these if you want to take the drive with you. Generally speaking I recommend portable hard drives unless you need more than a few terabytes of space, in which case you’ll have to go with a desktop drive. Download Microsoft SyncToy Download Microsoft SyncToy by navigating to Microsoft’s website here: There are two possible downloads: get the one ending in “x86.exe”, as this will be compatible with the most computers. What is oem activation.
The file is relatively small and should finish downloading in a few minutes over most Internet connections. After it’s finished, double-click the file to start the installation and follow the wizard to complete it. Setup Files and Folders Step One: First connect your external storage device to your computer via the instructions included with it.
If it’s a new drive, it might take your computer a few minutes to recognize and install it. Step Two: Open SyncToy: Windows Vista/7: open the Start menu and type “SyncToy”; click on the search result. Windows 8: open the Start menu by pressing the Windows logo key on your keyboard, then type “SyncToy” and click on the search result. Step Three: We’ll begin setting up SyncToy by clicking the “Create New Folder Pair” button. SyncToy works by synchronizing folders; the left folder is what exists on your computer and the right folder will exist on the external hard drive.
Click the “Browse” button under “Left Folder”. Select a folder on your computer that contains personal information.
I’m selecting my Pictures folder in this example. Next click the “Browse” button next to the “Right” folder. You’ll need to create a folder on the external hard drive for each folder you want to synchronize from your computer. We can do this right through SyncToy. Expand “My Computer” (or “This PC” if you’re using Windows 8), select your external storage device, then click “Make New Folder”.
Give the folder a name that allows you to recognize it as a backup folder. Since I’m backing up my pictures, I named my folder “PicturesBackup”. Click the “Next” button to go to step two where you’ll have the following options for synchronizing your folder:.
Synchronize:New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other. Echo:New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right. Contribute:New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.
For backup purposes, use Contribute; a leading reason why files get lost is due to accidental deletion. Contribute won’t delete a file out of the synchronized folder even if you deleted it on your computer. If you want your left and right folders to be identical to each other, use Synchronize. Follow the steps listed above until you’ve created folder pairs for each of the folders on your computer containing personal information. Common locations you’ll probably want to backup include:. My Documents.
My Pictures. My Music. My Videos Step Four: It’s time to run SyncToy. If you only need to backup a single folder of files then you can run folder synchronizations individually by clicking on a folder pair (listed down the left side of the interface), then the “Run” button in the bottom right. For those of you who have multiple folders to backup you can also run all of your folders by clicking “All Folder Pairs” on the left, then “Run All” (see below). I recommend running the synchronizations one by one your first time; run all of them at the same time from then on out. This will help you verify that your files have been copied successfully from the beginning and speed up the process for later backups.
You should note that SyncToy could take several hours to complete a backup the first time you run it as all of the files from your computer will need to be copied; subsequent runs will finish in a fraction of the time because SyncToy only copies the files that have been changed. Stick to a Backup Schedule Generally speaking you’ll want to run a backup of all your folder pairs at least once per week. Personally I run my backups at the end of each working day; I might do an additional backup if I created several new files. Ideally you’d avoid keeping your external storage device in the same proximity as your computer; this way you’ll have recourse if something disastrous happens. Personally I keep one external hard drive on hand to do my daily backups, and another external hard drive in a safe deposit box at the bank which I retrieve and back up files to once per month. Conclusion In this guide we showed you how to use Microsoft SyncToy, freeware software to backup personal data to an external storage device.
We also provided some tips on buying an external storage device based on how much storage you have currently plus guidance on how often to run backups. Gcarterm December 29, 2014 at 7:40 am Hi Jerry — Good article. SyncToy might or might not be what I need. After a catastrophic crash of and external WD 2tb drive I was using for backup (I was able to copy the files onto a new external using testdisk), I’m going to get a Tripp Lite Hard Drive RAID Enclosure. It has two bays. I don’t want to use it as a RAID framework, just as a double backup.
Latest Version Of Synctoy
My question is, can SyncToy dupe my PC’s files onto TWO external drives? Or, is there a better way to do this? And I do plan to B/U at least once a week to both drives. KarineB April 20, 2015 at 1:12 pm Great article. I’m glad you showed that it works on Win 8.
I’ve used SyncToy for years syncing two Win 7 computers with no issue. I just got the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with Windows 8 and am trying to sync my Win 7 desktop to the Win 8 machine and am running into multiple errors. I’ve also tried on an HP laptop with Windows 8 and get the same errors. Is there something special that I would need to download to get it to work? I love the tool and completely agree that the cloud isn’t always the best thing to rely on.
When a small business cannot afford industry standard backup tools like, or they are working off a desktop machine and need a more flexible backup than what is built into their platform, what options are there? One option that many SMBs use is but that software hasn't had a new release since 2009. Another option is the open source backup tool. Download the. Double-click the downloaded file.
Walk through the installation wizard. Here are the installation steps for Ubuntu Linux:. Open a terminal window.
Issue the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freefilesync/ffs to add the repository. Update apt with the command sudo apt-get update. Install FreeFileSync with the command sudo apt-get install freefilesync. Using FreeFileSync We'll create an automatic backup so most of the dirty work is handled by the application. During the creation process, you'll see how simple it is to create the other types of backups. First, you must decide on the source and targets for the backup.
I will working on a Ubuntu 12.10 machine (the process for setting up the backups is the same on Windows and Linux — the only adjustments Windows users need to make are directory paths). I want to back up (sync) my /home/jlwallen/Pictures directory to a Pictures directory on an external drive. Open FreeFileSync and, when the main window appears ( Figure A), click the Browse button in the left pane. Locate your source directory (in my case /home/jlwallen/Pictures). You could also enter the path to that directory in the text area above the left pane. Figure A Depending upon your skill level, you might be intimidated by the interface, but the tool is much easier to use than it looks. (Click the image to enlarge.) Then, you'll do the same thing for the right pane and locate the target directory.
Once you locate the target, you'll want to do a comparison run on the two locations. Click the Compare button and, the results of the comparison will appear very quickly. You get plenty of information ( Figure B) about what is going to happen when you click the Synchronize button. In the bottom right corner, you get a snapshot of exactly what is going to happen when the backup occurs. (Click the image to enlarge.) If you need version control on a backup, this is also possible. If you click the gear icon next to the Synchronize button, the Synchronization Settings window will appear ( Figure C). Click the Versioning button, and then you can configure the versioning limit for a backup.
Figure C How errors are handled is also configured in this window. (Click the image to enlarge.) Let's say you want to save and schedule this particular backup. FreeFileSync does not have a built-in scheduler, so you need to save the backup as a file and then use your operating system's built-in schedule to schedule the saved backup file. Here's how:. Once you set up your backup exactly how you want, go to Advanced Create Batch Job. In the Batch Job window ( Figure D), make sure everything is set exactly how you need.
If the backup job is to run without user intervention, make sure to disable the Show Progress Dialog checkbox in the Batch Settings tab. In the Batch Settings tab, set Error Handling to Ignore. Save the backup script with a unique name (by default the name will be SyncJob.ffsbatch) by clicking the Save As button. Figure D From this window, you can set up backup filtering. (Click the image to enlarge.) Now that the backup script is written, the final step is to use your built-in scheduling tool to run the script when necessary.
If you're unsure of how to use cron for Linux, you could install a handy tool called to gain a nice GUI tool for scheduling cron jobs. You now have a reliable backup scheduled. Conclusion Although you won't benefit from full-metal backups and restores, if you're looking for a flexible and easy to use data backup solution, give FreeFileSync a try, and see if it meets your needs.
SyncToy freeware - The Latest Versions History 2.1 Nov 10, 2009 New Release # Better Performance: The speed of file copy operations is significantly increased across the board. # Improved Robustness: Much more resilient to transient network and file system errors and better error reporting which pin-points which file the sync failed on in case there’s a fatal error that stops the sync. # Folder pair configuration backup: Folder pair configuration is automatically backed up under%localappdata%microsoftsynctoy2.0. User can replace SyncToyDirPairs.bin with the backup copy to resolve last saved configuration. # Bug Fixes:.
Fixed the data corruption issue when using SyncToy with NAS drives. Fixed the issue that prevented uploading files to SharePoint when using SyncToy 2.0. Fixed the issue that prevented delete changes from being synchronized when the sync option is set to “Echo”. Fixed the UI issue where reported file time were off by the difference between local time and UTC when destination is a FAT volume. 2.0 Aug 15, 2008 New Release.
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