On Friday, 12 October 2018 17:12:35 UTC+1, Bill wrote:
In message ,
tabbypurr writes
On Friday, 12 October 2018 13:27:13 UTC+1, Rob Morley wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 06:14:44 -0700 (PDT)
tabbypurr wrote:

You've already got easy to operate software. OPen file manager,
select all, copy. Go to your new external usb disc, create a new
folder and paste. It could not be simpler.

That only works as long as you remember to save a fresh copy of
anything that changes, or regularly save everything then de-dupe it.

or save everything every however often you choose and don't bother deduping it.

I have a writer friend who used to do this and ended up with utter
chaos.

it's about the simplest way to backup going, and simplest way to restore data. If they ended up with chaos I can only conclude they were doing something else. It also has the benefit of keeping a few copies of earlier versions.

Files have to be closed before they will copy, so you have to be certain
where all the data files are and that they are all closed.

not on any PC I've ever used.
I can't imagine not knowing where my data is, though I know there are users like that.

Far better to take occasional full images of the machine and then
regular backups of specific areas of data. I use Macrium for the images
and SyncToy for the backups of data, the data being organised so that it
is in a known area rather than lost in Microsoft'e virtual directories.

why would you not just backup the lot frequently in one move? Any data you've not backed up in a while is going to be far out of date, and your approach much complicates restoring data if you have a drive or FS die.


NT

My reason for sticking to SyncToy is that I still do some audio work on
different machines and the audio (and video) is set to make cumulative
backups rather than destructive or duplicate ones.