Windows Backup help

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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:12 am

Okay a couple of questions... I just bought a new USB external hard drive for wifeys computer. To be used for backup. I tried the software that came with it, total crap. So now I have several gig (like 40) of data on this HD that I want to delete. It will take a couple hours apparently to just hit delete and let windows move it to the recycle bin.

1. how can I delete without it moving to recycle? Just make it go away stupid windows.

2. What is the best (free) backup software I can use?

thanks for any help you can give Smile

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 1043

If you don't want any of the data on the HDD, then reformat it. That should be much quicker.

What do you want to back up, if it's just a few folders (I.E. Work, pictures, etc) then you might want to use a .bat file see http://www.instructables.com/id/Watch-your-back-up!/. This should utilise robocopy, it works well for me, but i'm not sure if it will be what you are after. It autoruns when you plug the drive in.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

The Man wrote:

2. What is the best (free) backup software I can use?

I have had great luck with the open source, and free, SelfImage.

http://selfimage.excelcia.org/

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:37 am

If i recall correctly if u hold down the SHIFT key then right click the file and click delete it wont go to the recycle bin

as someone said best just to format the drive depending on the size of it

Are you going to do regular structured backups?

or just copying everything every now and again

if it is the latter why not just select everything then right click and click copy then poaste it in the drive

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:38 am

If you want to permanently delete stuff without it going to the waste bin first, press the shift key while doing the delete action. Works on files, but also in Outlook for example. Make sure you are sure you want to do this, because it's (sort of) gone for ever and instantly frees up the disk space (still recoverable with undelete tools, but that's another story).

XP also comes with its own backup software (start - all programs - accessories - system tools - backup) that is maybe not the best tool, but it does the job. When starting up, cancel the wizard (go to advanced mode), choose what you want to back up, and set the external drive path as the backup media. You can give consecutive backups different names (include the date in the name) if you want to keep some history.

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:00 pm

Thanks guys.

Formating the HDD is what I did. I did not care about the data on it. Windows Vista even has a "quick format" option and it took about 30 seconds to format a 160 GB hard drive.

Vistas back up software is "fair". I want to back up the entire drive so that if the main drive fails I can install a new working drive and then just restore the backup to be exactly where I was before without having to reinstall all my software.

The HDD is a bit larger than the drive in the computer and Vista does a great job of compressing the data, so I should be able to have several backup sets on the drive.

I am not sure how it was speed wise, but Vista took about 3 hours to back up 40GB of data. This is over a USB 2.0 connection.

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:21 pm

I Can't test it right now, but I don't think deleting files on an external drive puts anything in in the windows bin? With network drives I know this for a fact, not too sure about USB drives though...

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 12:28 pm

Dutch:

yes, it puts it in the bin. Since I did not want the data on there I simply did a quick format. Much faster.

Currently I just ran Vista's backup program and have it scheduled to just run every sunday night. It takes several hours, but I suspect the subsequent backups will be faster since much of the stuff on the HD is static.

Either way since it will just run automatically overnight I don't care if it takes a few hours.

Thanks all for your help.