Easy Backup to External Drive

[Rathji]

My grandparents just lost all their documents/pictures etc that they had added since I last was at their place a year ago. In the process of finding out what they have backed up, I have determined that they make occasional (every 6 months for some stuff) backups to DVD/Flash drives.

They have 2 computers (one Vista, one XP) on their network with a wireless router. Total HDD space for both machines is slightly north of 500gig max, so a 500 gig drive would work but if it is cheap enough I would prefer a TB drive that would last them beyond any hardware upgrades they might do. I have seen stuff in fliers that claims to be "hands free backup", but I would like to know if they would work as well as I need in my situation.

Ideally what I want is a drive I can plug into their router or into a USB hub and into both machines that will automatically back up both machines once configured. They live out of town, and I don't get down there very often, so I would prefer something that is as easily configurable as possible as most likely it will be my Mom actually doing the install with my guidance over the phone.

Anyone have any ideas or actual experience with something like this?

[GoinAllTheWay]

I'm gonna take every oppurtunity like this to pimp the Windows Home Server. This thing is cheap and freakin brilliant. You can buy a pre built one for around $400 or buy the O/S for a spare rig you have kicking around (the hardware requirements are really low). There is naturally going to be an initial setup but once running, you can pretty much leave it alone. The reason it's valuable to your grandparents is it automatically backs up each machine, in its entirety, each night. It obviously has a ton of higher functions as well but this is the biggest. It would also allow you to connect to each computer in their house remotley if they need your assistance.

This honestly has to be one of Microsofts most under appreciated products.

If you are sure you just want an external drive, that can be done pretty easily for around $130 for the HD enclosure and a 1TB drive. ME also has decent Network attached storage, I'm pretty sure it has some sort of backup program as well. Buying it and a HD or two will run a bit cheaper than the WHS. Only drawback to the network attached storage is I think at one point they were easily hacked but I doubt that's much of an issue anymore.

[Jimmy Stang]

You could either get a network attached enclosure and back both up to that, or you could just get an external drive on one of the computers and share it to the other computer.

For software, at work and at home I use SyncBack SE. It is about $30. Lets you do all sorts of backups and synchronizations. You can even run them on a schedule or on a trigger (when drive X is plugged in, etc.). if you have access to an FTP server with sufficient storage, you can even have it backup to that.

And although I don't use it, another thing to look at is online backup services. That way if the house burns down/floods/gets broken into, the data is off-site and safe.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Forgot to mention a really important aspect of WHS.

Like I mentioned, it does a backup each night. If they blow a hard drive, all you have to do is go out, buy a new one, chuck it in and WHS will restore the ENTIRE computer, drivers and all. It's like the failed drive never happened.

I had to actually do this once not to long ago, once I got over some driver issues (realtek network adapters can be problematic), I fully restored my gaming rig in less than 1 hour.

If they delete a file by accident, it too can be easily restored from the server. Ravaged by a virus? Fixable. The WHS will keep backups for up to 3 months. The backup is very fast too with the exception of the first one. First backup you do, WHS will copy the entire volume over, will take up to a couple hours depending on the size of their drives. Every backup after the first one will only take 10-15 mins as it only looks for changes after that.

WHS will even wakeup computers that are asleep, do its thing and put the computer back to sleep.