I use to use Fabs Auto back up in the days of XP, but the free version isn’t compatible with Win8.

Does anybody have any tips for any nifty (free) back-up utils?

cheers

I just do it manually. Not helpful really, I guess.

there’s an option built ito windows 10 to do it. I’ve got mine backing up to another comp on the network, you can choose a specific drive too. and specify which folders to back up.(i just back up the desktop as its the only place i save stuff.)

i guess this isn’t helpful either! 😆

I too tend to back up manually.
But it depends what sort of back up you want, for me it’s just 2 folders, pics and music which I mirror onto 2 back up drives, just drag and drop the whole lot from my system drive now and then, and overwrite the old backup.

Acronis is pretty good but you have to buy it or pirate it.

Robocopy. It is a simple copying tool, included as standard with Windows. You can set it to copy particular folders, and just copy changed files etc.
It is a command line tool, so maybe a bit tricky to setup. But once you’ve figured out the command, you can save it as a batch file, then set it to run automatically as a scheduled task.

Cobian BackUp 11

Cobian Backup Too. Does proper shadow copy backups of whatever files / folders you need. To a backup every night to my NAS in the background and once per month to separate USB HD.

Backup what?
Files and photos and stuff, Win 8 (and 10) has folder history which copies folders to a location you choose, in the background (you tell it how often). I’ve been running this at home, it copies stuff from 3 users to a second hard drive, just as a copy, not compressed, so you can see what it’s done. Seems fine Obviously, you still need to back up off site as well.

For the OS, Win 8 (and 10) do a system copy to anywhere with the space. I also use this, but never used it so can’t say how well it works.

Yep back to the what are you try to achieve?

I back up photos, video and documents via Google drive, photos and dropbox with a nas in the house. Then the os can be restored from scratch – doesn’t take long.

Windows will also do file and images of drives.

Robocopy copy commands saved to a .cmd file and scheduled in Windows Task Scheduler works for me.

The commands I use to backup my Users folders are:

rem robocopy D:\Users\ G:\D_Users_Backup\ /MIR /XA:SH /W:0 /R:1 /REG /XJ > D:\Users\ExternalBackup.log
rem robocopy C:\Users\ G:\C_Users_Backup\ /MIR /XA:SH /W:0 /R:1 /REG /XJ >> D:\Users\ExternalBackup.log

Note – these use the /MIR option which will mirror the contents to the backup drive, if you delete something and then the backup command runs it deletes it from there as well.

i use this…it works great for me, just create a list of the folders you need backing up

http://www.freefilesync.org/

I use SyncToy seems perfect for the simple back-ups i do.

By the maker, is that still going?

Synctoy for me too, simple and works.