Dear All,
I regularly back up my PC onto a standalone hard drive and use the backup programme in Vista. It allows me to regularly backup, and is meant to only backup those files changed since the previoius backup.
From what I gather, it copies everything except programme files, so i presume if my pc died it will allow me to restore. I have no idea how this works, and thankfully I haven't had to put it to the test yet!
When I have looked at the files saved on the standalone hdd, they seem to be listed numerically in some way, so I presume in the case of my pc dying, I have to use the Restore facility. It doesn't seem to simply produce a mirror of my pc.

If I simply 'copy and paste' the important things – doc's, photo's and music – across to the hard drive, I can see the files and recognise them so could copy them back in an emergency 'manually' by doing it myself, though I expect I'd loose my emails.

Can any IT people out there give me advice as to the pro's and con's of Vista's built in system v's simple copy and paste?

Has anyone had to use the Vista recovery system – was it ok? simple to use?

thoughts please!
thanks people
cheers
Q

Synctoy is the tool for me. Free from MS

Synctoy for me too – as its name suggests it synchronises files from A to B with various options. Great for periodically dumping files onto a NAS and it's smart enough to only copy what's changed.

synctoy here too

erm…. I think a friend has mentioned this before. How does it work?
Q

Vista's backup is next to useless in my opinion. It doesn't even allow you to select what you want to backup!

RTFM

here and here.

synctoy here too, also install it instead of any of the crap backup software that come with portable hdd's for my users…
(because it works and once setup even the most ****** user can use it..)