What automatic data back up software is good and simple to use please ?

Cheers 🙂

synctoy works well for me.

How do you guys back up data, do you use a simple external drive or use a backup online service, or perhaps both ?

SyncBack, Genie Timeline

/ Time Machine /

I use dropbox for online back up and sharing between my PCs and an external drive for pictures and as a secondary back-up.

I use an external drive to backup the files that are irreplaceable – photos basically.

depends what you’re trying to do but the Windows backup stuff is pretty good.

I just got an NAS drive that uses memeo to do backups and that seems fairly good too (although the initial 200gb backup took a while over a wi-fi connection the subsequent incremental stuff isn’t noticeable)

Synctoy to a NAS and a removable USB hard drive for me (goes offsite to mums house). Synctoy’s not proper backup but is essentially a file/folder copy so great for photos, documents, mp3s which is presumably what you’re after. I run it in ‘contribute’ mode so nothing gets deleted on the backup end. It’s also easy to see that it’s working (failed backups are worse than no backups) because you can readily browse the backed up files as if they were local.

Don’t rely solely on the cloud/internet backup. Unless there’s client-side encryption your data could be nicked, the government in that region could walk off with the servers in a criminal investigation or more likley the provider could just shut up shop. Great as a means of offsite backup though (house burns down, computer gear nicked) assuming you also backup to a NAS/portable HDD.

I use Cobian backup 10, which is set to backup files to an external HDD and windows live skydrive, which I have mapped as a network drive.

Really flexible and works what more would you want!

Another vote for Cobian. It is easy to install and set-up. Once set-up you can effectively forget about it!

Cheers peeps, just downloaded Cobian, so I will give that a go!