i know the question has been asked before...the last thread is over a year old, though, and the consensus is (was) acronis...but acronis has been sucking balls lately (for me, anyway) and so i'm curious as to whether there are any other good options available that y'all can speak to

my HTPC is always one...attached to it are a variety of external hard drives, one of which is my "backup all the stuff i think is important" drive...it's shared through the HTPC but is not directly available on the network

i'd like for both my HTPC and my laptop to backup to that drive on a regular basis (every night, ideally, but that might be too much)...i want it to back up only certain folders, though, not the whole computer

freeware would be great, but it isn't necessary

11/10/2010 1:20:31 PM

With Windows 7 pro or ultimate you can do this with built-in tools. Since you only want to do certain folders, you might want to look at microsoft's synctoy.

11/10/2010 1:41:24 PM

i have 7 ultimate on the HTPC, but only home on the laptop (i think...i'll have to double-check)

11/10/2010 1:46:02 PM

cobian

11/10/2010 3:01:34 PM

^ new to me...will check it out

11/10/2010 3:09:55 PM

thats kinda gay if win7 home doesn't have a builtin backup.

11/10/2010 3:15:02 PM

^ It does, but you need pro or ultimate to backup to a network drive and not just an internal or external drive.

11/10/2010 3:53:45 PM

haha thats just silly.

11/10/2010 3:55:46 PM

What if you just add a network path as a drive letter?

11/10/2010 3:58:18 PM

No idea. I haven't experimented with it. I just read the product literature.

11/10/2010 4:02:38 PM

^^I agree. Unless he is wanting versioned backups or something, mounting it as a drive plus a Robocopy script should be able to handle this.

11/10/2010 4:07:38 PM

^ & ^^^ Agree.

Win 7 backup is pretty nice as well.

11/10/2010 4:41:11 PM

ntbackup.exe

11/10/2010 5:28:34 PM

i am apparently the only person in the world that has ever found working with windows for sharing hard drives a pain in the ass...i would have assumed that windows 7 would make it dummy proof (with me as the dummy in this scenario), but no, it's still retarded

my HTPC has an external hard drive attached via USB called "storage"...there is a folder on that drive called "backup"...i right-click the "backup" folder and share it with everyone (change and read permissions) and it tells me that the share name is now

\\computername\backup

when i go to my laptop and put this in, it bitches at me saying that \\computername can be found, but \backup cannot and then suggests that i may have spelled it wrong (which i did not)

i have an XP box on my network that was easier to share than this

11/10/2010 5:50:04 PM

No honestly, I have more trouble with sharing in Win 7 that XP for some reason. I found that even after I went and "shared" it to Everybody in the Sharing tab, I also had to go under the Security tab and give Everybody read only permissions on that folder.

This kinda makes sense if you think about it but is still annoying as hell.

[Edited on November 10, 2010 at 7:55 PM. Reason : Meh]

11/10/2010 7:54:31 PM

i'm fairly certain i tried that already, but i did several things last night that didn't work so i don't remember...i'll double-check tonight

11/11/2010 9:17:27 AM