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Just did a quick search.
Six or seven years ago, I think, I got good advice here about backups.
And So...
Hoping for two in a row.
I'm currently looking at...
- Western Digital External Hard Drives
- Acronis Software
I searched, found these, and yawned; pay money and import complexity to your domestic life...
Has anyone seen this list of free software ?...
Advice and thoughts from folks with more knowledge than I have (easy claim to make at this moment) are welcome and will be read with interest at or above the prevailing Federal Funds Rate.
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I still use AOMEI Backupper - and it continues to get better with each release.
The latest version includes live file syncing, and outlook email backups (as they come in, I think - it's updating as I type).
The WD externals should be good, I have a bunch of Seagate external 4TB USB jobbies, and they are fine. But when I replace them, it'll probably be SSD's to improve backup speed, and probably SATA.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I will second Griff's AOMEI Backupper. The free version is easy to use and fairly feature rich. It also has a paid version that unlocks some additional features but I've not found the need for them for the backups that I do.
I chose it based on Griff's past recommendation so my vote should probably only count for half. 
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Myself when I find some free software that I find useful over time I always make it a point to buy the paid version (if not overly expensive) since it of course keeps the original author(s) encouraged to keep working on it. Even if it is nothing more than making sure it works on newer OS versions.
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I save everything that is important to me in my "c:\Hogan" directory on my PC. When I need to backup my machine (which I do weekly), I back up this folder with a command line script and send the file to my NAS for safe keeping. Its a little bit manual. But this puts me in control. If my machine crashes or I get a new one, all I have to do is restore the c:\Hogan folder from backup and install apps. Then I'm good to go. Its worked with every version of Windows 
Hogan
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I've used Acronis for years and every version I say I'm switching to something else, because they keep getting crappier. And now they've gone to a subscription model and I refuse to give them any more money so when I switch I'm thinking of going to Backup & Recovery Community Edition | Paragon Software Group[^]. Hmm just noticed the community edition is free...downloading!
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I used to use Acronis. It seemed like every release they removed features that you had before and tried charging you extra for them to get a higher tiered product version... Man, I really do miss being able to remotely install a service and create backups on command though. 
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I have been using Macrium Reflect the last years and I am happy with it.
It is less "non techie" friendly than AOMEI, but people here should have no problems at all using it.
It has a free version that does the basic staff. It allows you to make a bootable CD / DVD. Images are not bigger than other software...
EDIT:
I use it for imaging my System Partition (very few to none private data in it).
For my private data I use a custom directory structure, a couple of batches and robocopy.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I recommend using a Synology NAS (instead of WD external drives) with their Active Backup software (this is free). We used them for 10 years and so far we had no issues. Among other things they can upload/sync NAS content to various cloud providers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc) so you backups are kept safe in 2 places.
If you go this way, make sure you get a NAS with an Intel processor and at least 2 drive bays, so you can put 2 drives in RAID mode. You can start with a single drive and add a second one later.
The initial cost might be a bit higher than WD external drives but the long term benefits compensate this.
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The problems I have with this (and I have a 16TB QNAP NAS in RAID 5) is that the NAS is almost certainly not air gapped, and is a single point of failure.
If backup drives aren't routinely air gapped then they are vulnerable to Ransomware at the same time as the computer(s) they are connected to - and most Ransomware does scan for network attached drives as well as local HDD and USB / External SATA devices.
And if it's plugged in, it's vulnerable to disaster: fire, theft, even lightning strike. Decades ago, the office where I was working got hit by a ground strike - the earth connection went to several million volts for a brief time. That blew out the telephone exchange and the disk controllers (in those days, IDE drive controllers weren't built into the M/B) on every plugged in computer, regardless of it's powered-on status.*
But our backups were air gapped anyway - and stored offsite - so even if all the computers has physically melted, we would at worst have lost a few days work.
A NAS is not a backup device! 
* We were lucky: new IDE cards and exchange, we were up and running in 24 hours. The company just down the road has a VAX connected to a big UPS, which exploded and sprayed the computer with battery acid.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I agree it is not a true backup device. But it is better than an external drive. And you can set it to backup itself to multiple cloud providers. The probability to have all backup locations hit by ransomware at the same time is almost zero.
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It's not better than external drives, it's more convenient!
All it takes is the one PC with access to it to get ransomware and that's your backups encrypted (if you are lucky, some just overwrite with random data). Which makes it a lot more hassle to get the company back up and running ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I'm going to Plus One on using a NAS.
I have just had a friend ask me if I can do anything with his unresponsive WD external USB drive. Normally I would have removed the drive, put it in a cradle and tried to recover what I could - no way! WD drives now have the USB interface as part of the drive electronics.
As mentioned below a NAS is a single point of failure and could be stolen. However I have been using NASs for 20 years or more and have never lost any data, despite several disk failures. Their seamless integration with cloud backup services means that in the event of the worst, you lose at most maybe a day's worth of data.
Having been victim of a fire at the office I was confronted with the loss of 4 months enterprise data due to someone having forgotten to take tape cartridges off-site.
Try to find a NAS that can pull data from your computers, no need to install software on each one.
I use Duplicati on Linux and Macrium Reflect for 'whole machine' PC backups and pull user folders (Documents etc.) via a Robocopy script that runs on a PC that is always on.
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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I don't bother with backing up individual files locally; only entire partitions/drives.
-Macrium Reflect to an external USB every day. (free, once you have the drive)
-Backblaze subscription ($94/year for the 1 year retention plan) for the event of malware. Above Macrium images get backed up with it.
The Macrium images can be mounted as normal drives for restoring indvidual files if necessary.
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Oh Baby You Found Some Good Stuff.
Indeed.
Thanks
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It all depends on how much data you can afford to lose. Daily, weekly, real time? Before I retired, our source code repos (on the network) were backed up nightly on a weekly rotation, and a month-end retention for 2 years, and a yearly backup forever.
Our boss also subscribed later on to an offsite, real-time system that hooked into file system writes so every change was sent out offsite.
My workstation was my responsibility, so I opted to disc image weekly to alternating external drives. I used a free utility, DriveImageXML. Pretty handy.
After retirement I still image my drive, however now it’s monthly and rotating over three externals.
I’m using Paragon drive utilities - the paid version - because it has some features I needed (once). It’ll do incremental and differential backups if you need that.
Free software is nice for some lesser utilities, but I don’t mind paying for something I use regularly. We all like to be paid for our work, right?
There are plenty of utilities out there: many options. Consider your objectives and the answer will become clear.
Cheers,
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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Hi, I'm not sure what is your goal for a backup software, but maybe you could also be interested in the rewamped "Cobian Backup". From few months the original developer has started a new cloned and modernized version called "Cobian Reflector".
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I'll add another downvote to Acronis. They ruined their UI first (dumbing it down well beyond usefulness, inflating wasted real estate), then proceeded to introduce the stupidest problems to the backend. I stopped updating at 2019. I can list far too many serious problems. Whoever's running the show there simply doesn't "get" backups. Just don't.
One thing I've done for as long as I can remember is to set up NAS and keep my backups some physical distance from their sources. After all this time it still seems like a good idea. I recently built my own. It might not be feature-rich, but for this job I don't need it to be, and it was way cheaper. I'd avoid single-disk solutions, though, because you'll out of commission when you need to upgrade and potentially face a new problem of how to transfer your existing data.
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Thank you one and all.
I'm still working on my instant internet expert badge for this one
Looks like the magic words I'm after are...
I'm still a little unclear on the industry's definition of "sync" in this context. Brain assistance is welcome
I think I need an ounce of vocabulary confirmation/education: Does the Phrase, "...From Outside The Operating System..." means that I will boot from their CD-Rom (whatever) and they will do the activity without using Windows (or whatever) ? i.e., Have they have written their own minimalist OS that does enough to make a solid duplicate on another disk drive ?
If my understanding of that concept is correct, are any of these packs actually giving me a Bit-For-Bit perfect copy of one disk on the other ?
At this moment, my goal is to have my entire 1TB hard disk from my old computer duplicated, bit for bit, on some external drive so that I can search (and use, when needed) those files from the previous five years; without having to use that old computer or its OS.
From looking at the comments here, and several different vendors, I think these packs that do their work from "outside the operating system" (if I'm understanding the jargon) are the ones I want.
Again, my thanks to everyone. This is actually helping me.
And
Please correct me before I blow up the world or something.
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Festivity coordinates. It's huge! (6)
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Galaxy ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Four hours last night, no solution. Four minutes tonight... YAUT!
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Good clue
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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