Systura Where information becomes knowledge...

How do you backup your computer?  I have tried several programs.  The first one that I used was SyncToy from Microsoft.  SyncToy is a free utility and does a great job of keeping information in sync between your computer and a backup source.  The main downside of the program is that there is no integrated scheduling program.  Microsoft does have a knowledge base article which tells you how to schedule SyncToy and is helpful, but does not have any alerts if it fails.

The tool that I am using now is Second Copy.  Second Copy is not free, but I have found it to be well worth the $29.95 that I paid for it.  Second Copy allows you to create multiple profiles.  A profile includes a source and destination as well as a schedule and the schedule has many options including how frequently, including the ability to select days, which is important for some of my profiles.  I backup my data at home and the office and with the days selection, I only backup at the office during the week when I should be in the office.

The really cool feature that I love is emailing the logs when a profile is complete.  I like that for two reasons, one, so I can get an update of what was backed up, and two, if I put this on somebody else's computer, then I know if their backup was successful.

Now that I have Second Copy, I am removing SyncToy and keeping things backup with Second Copy only.