Best way to sync files between PC and NAS?

[Maxxarcade]

I have a NASLite-2 server that supports Rsync, which I use to backup my Windows XP PC, and also as a media server.

Right now I use Deltacopy and Synctoy to make backups from my PC to the NAS. Are there any other programs that would work better? I'm looking for something that can be manual and also automated/scheduled. Deltacopy is ok, but the interface could be a bit better. But up until now, I've done everything manually with Windows Exporer.

Any recommendations?

[Topcat]

Re: Best way to sync files between PC and NAS?

I too would be interested in some of the recommendations.... Scheduled/automated mirroring or syncing would make full backups so easy... I do it all manually right now...

[willawake]

Re: Best way to sync files between PC and NAS?

i use backup magic. i am sure there is better though. useful also when you are trying to copy a lot of files and get fails on some for some reason. like from some busted optical disk or hdd. impossible in explorer
http://www.moonsoftware.com/bmagic.asp

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Best way to sync files between PC and NAS?

I stopped doing backups manually when for some reason, I lost a bunch of files... I copied a folder from PC to NAS like usual, overwriting an existing folder with a newer copy. For some reason the backup copy ended up being a cross between the old copy and the new one, and a lot of the newest files were missing. I lost lots of photos doing that

Lesson learned: ALWAYS verify your backups before formatting

Willawake: That program looks cool, but probably won't do much more than the current (and free) programs I'm already using

[Per Hansson]

Re: Best way to sync files between PC and NAS?

Backups are for sissies

I just open a public FTP and then zip my files and name them Windows Vista Datacenter edition rev 14

Next it's just to search google for my backups

Nah seriously, at home I have very few if any backups done...

For my server I use a service by The Planet (the host company) called Discsync, it's very effective, only backs up the data that has changed, so the backups become very small... (it is not simply full/incremental backups...) it is a Delta Block Incremental backup, meaning that there is only ever one full backup then the rest of the data is constructed using delta backups, so only the actual bits of data that changed are transferred...

For MySQL I use a simple script that dumps the database every day before the backup is done...

Every week I also send this backup offsite home to myself... Can't never have to many backups... I do this using SCP through a SSH tunnel...

[bgavin]

Re: Best way to sync files between PC and NAS?

I wrote a wrapper for NTBackup that optionally pushes a copy of the completed BKF to a network share or different drive location. It self regulates its space consumption and has a retention period of 1..999 (infinite) days. It does either a Full or Diff backup, with point and click selection of days to run. It will also reboot if requested at completion.