Anyone know of any good Windows solutions to automatically backup my laptop over WiFi? I'd like to set it up so that when I have my laptop at home, it automatically runs an incremental backup to refresh a secondary copy of everything onto a drive that's at my home. Anyone know of a solution that does this well?
Any syncing utility will do it if you have it set up correctly. If you map a network drive to a share on the desktop, you can use SyncToys to do it for free.
telstar said: runs an incremental backup to refresh a secondary copy of everythingDo you really mean everything? The entire drive? For that you really need an imaging program. If you just mean your documents, then the above posts are what you are after.
Windows Backup is a built-in, free backup utility included with Windows. It can do a full or incremental backup and direct the output to any local or network drive. You can choose a full drive backup, or selected folders/files. The output is compressed.
Windows Backup can be found in XP under Start; All Programs; Accessories; System tools; Backup. If there's not shortcut there, the executable is NTBACKUP.EXE which you can access via the Run command on the start menu. It will start in a wizard and guide you through the options. Near the end it will show the “Finish” button, but instead click the “Advanced…” button just above it and continue with more options. When the wizard gets to the question, “When do you want to run the backup?” click later and it will allow you to schedule it using Windows Scheduler to run at whatever frequency and time of day you choose.
It runs fairy quickly. I backup 172 meg in MyDocuments daily and it takes two minutes, but that's on a wired connection. (I also use Acronis True Image to image the entire drive once a month or so.)
As long as the drive you want to place your backup file on is shared, or a network drive, then wireless should not be a problem, although I've nver tried it.
This creates one file which is a compressed image of all the folders/files you specified as part of your backup, not a file by file uncompressed "copy" or mirror onto another drive, which is what it sounds like you have now. Your method allows easy access to the data, but takes up much more space.
MS Synctoy would be a better option if you want a file by file uncompressed copy so you can work with the files at home. You can probably schedule that, too, if it allows command line options. I have never used it so I can't say for sure.
Cool, thanks for all the suggestions. I used to use Syncback, so maybe I'll start with that app and a shared drive on my network. Appreciate all the suggestions.
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