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Best way to back up computer to an external hard drive?
I recently bought a 250GB external hard drive to back up my new laptop I bought for college. It's an HP with Windows 7, 64-bit, if that matters.
What's a good program that will make it easy for me to back everything up to my drive? I'd like it to update things already on the drive whenever I back thigns up, for example if it backs up my music folder I just want it to add all my new files, not a copy of everything I already had.
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I would use the built-in Robocopy command-line utility. Use something like this:
robocopy /MIR /R:2 /W:5 /XJ C:Users F:backup
This will copy everything in C:Users to the F:backup folder. It will also delete files in F:backup that are not in C:Users. Paths with spaces must be surrounded by quotes. Files are not re-copied if they already exist in the destination. Files that are in use when you run Robocopy will not be copied, so close all programs while you run it.
Most people only have valuable data in C:Users, but if you have room in your external drive, you might also want to get "C:program files" and "C:ProgramData". Just run Robocopy several times with the different directories, or put the several Robocopy commands in a batch file.
If you prefer a graphical interface, SyncToy is very similar:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Put C:Users on the left and F:backup on the right (substitute your actual directories, of course). Deselect the "save overwritten files in the recycle bin" option.
You can use Cobian Backup if you want more advanced features like incremental backups:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
You MUST uncheck [Tools -> options -> engine -> include junction points]. Otherwise, some infinite-length paths will probably be copied, and they will be difficult to delete.
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