BleepingComputer.com: Automatic Back Up

I recently installed two new hard disks and was wondering if there is a utility that will automatically save a document to two different locations whenever I hit "save", or failing that, something that will automatically back up one drive to another without being prompted on a regular basis?

You could always set up a RAID 1 array. This will make a full copy of your hard drive onto a second hard drive, bit for bit in real time. Your motherboard may support this, or if not you can get an expansion card that will.

Hi ricrac.
If your preference is to backup only important files and folders of your choosing instead of an entire drive, and on a schedule, then a utility such as Comodo Backup may be more like what you're looking for.
It states you can use it to back them up to local or network drives though I have never used it. It's as close to a "multiple location" saving app as there is. I personally backup to internal IDE's and would never use an "auto-backup" function for an "entire" drive. You could very easily back up a virus or other "as yet undiscovered" problem accidently. Manually is the only way to go for a home pc. In a corporate network environment it wouldn't be practical but for home use, manual is best. Just another option for you if RAID is not.

I've been using Sync Toy lately, but also have Syncback and Folder Match. They all do the job but frankly drag and drop is generally faster when transferring large amounts. (I shoot a lot of events and will come home with 6 - 10 gigs occassionally).

What would be nice is a product that would save to two drives at the same time. Like when I edit in Photoshop, hit the save, and it goes to the same folder on two different drives at the same time. I don't suppose such a thing exists though. I may be looking into this RAID thing, but last I remember reading about it, I was put off by some complications (maybe price too).

Would anyone recommend any particular website for learning about RAID?

Thanks for your replies.

Hi, Ricrac.

I have been using Cobian Backup for the last eight weeks as a test, and It's been automatically backing up one large folder My Documents from Drive C: to drive D: faithfully, and on its own, timed once daily.
It works as you might want it to. However, if you need it to dump to TWO separate areas or separate hard disks, you might have to run two instances. My settings allow it to leave at least three previous backups.

Look into the Tutorial section and you will see a Tut by YourHighness for Cobian Backup and Restore.
It does not do complete, bootable, 'system' backups, like True Image does.
I'm not sure the Tutorial shows clearly how to RESTORE the files, but USASMA has on one occasion mentioned that one can just copy the backup to the original location, which is great!

For me, I'm still trying to find out how to use it to backup to a Remote machine over the internet...my main target. I don't quite understand the remote settings...

Max3808

You can't just copy an image (using Acronis True Image) - you must use the Acronis program to "restore" the image.

With a backup (such as Cobian) restoring is as simple as copying the data back to where it came from.

There are routines in SyncBack that will allow you to increment your backups. For example, when we backup my wife's office, we backup a separate folder for each day of the month. And, after the month is over, it starts back over in the beginning - so we've always got a month's worth of backups ready to go.

While I'm not familiar with the remote settings in Cobian, I found the FTP in Syncback to be too labor intensive (and lengthy) - so I opted to use pcAnywhere because of it's flexibility, compression, security, and speed of transfer.