How to backup nicely?

[gunbuster363]

Help! This problem have been annoying me for a very long time.
This is about backup files.

This is a scenario which annoy me when I backup:

I have a usb harddisk , let call it G:\
and I have a local harddisk, D:\

assume G:\myplace and D:\myplace should me storing the same folders and files.

The very first day, I copy everything from G:\myplace to D:\myplace, it is fine.

A few days later, I thought the D:\ is very messy, so I have delete/move many files, let say: I move a folder name "BBQ-20101121" to a new folder called "Family" because the bbq is family activity.

Then after a few months, I want to backup the data.
And then I found out that, there are a folder in G:\myplace,
but the new location should be G:\myplace\Family!

Can you see the problem?

Another example, during the days before the 2nd backup, I deleted a music album called "Country", but this folder exist in my usb harddisk! Now I have to manually go to G:\ and delete "Country" folder!

Can anyone suggest a solution?

Try DriveImage XML. If your G drive is bigger than your D drive then it will image your drive saving you time re-installing apps, and you get to keep the folder hierarchy, too.

[gunbuster363]

bump......but I actually have 2 drive C: and D: which have things inside, they are in 1 physical drive

[arenee]

this post must be useful to you
http://www.todo-backup.com/backup-resource/free-backup-software.htm

[Reverend Jim]

I use robocopy.exe (command line tool free from Microsoft). I do a weekly backup from my D drive to a folder on an external T drive. The command I use is

robocopy d:\ t:\ddrive /e /r:0 /purge

the first two parameters are the source and destination folders.

/e copies all sub-folders
/r:0 do not retry on error
/purge delete any files in the destination folder that are not in the source folder

You will get an error if you try to copy certain system files/folders like system volume information (which you don't need to back up). The /purge ensures that if you have deleted a file from the source drive then it will also be deleted on the destination drive. There are a ton of other options as well. This particular form of the command will not copy unchanged files so the more often you run it the faster it will run.