Hello everyone,

I would like to have an automated backup, i have between 5 to 10GB to backup monthly.

Can you advise me what to choose?

I did little research and found :

Backup exec + another HDD ?

Backup server ? (another computer)

Simple backup with DVD-R via nero?

tapes seems expensive am I right?

Your ideas?

Thanks a lot

The cheapest and easiest would be an external hard drive. You could put one together yourself with a 320GB hard drive for about $135 give or take. Less expensive with a smaller hdd depending on your storage needs. Being paranoid I have an internal backup for storage as well as an external. If you have several computers on a network, at least my external won't stay set as a shared drive for some reason so I use the internal backup drive for sharing. You can buy a Seagate 250GB external for as low as $70, local Best Buy special this week. I use a program called GoodSync for the backups, it's about $20 and very easy to use. If you need to access the data from several computers, a NAS would work but starts at about $400 plus, google NAS for reviews.

I also like to use a hard drive external or internal. one of my computers has a second 100 gig HD. I use a program called Quicksynk3 that came with my Zip drive. It works completely automatic over my network every week, night or as soon as changes are made or anything in between. It will also make as many backup copies as you tell it to, so you can backup to a backup from weeks ago or yesterday.

External drive, Acronis True Image software. You can clone your disks and boot from them for seamless backups.

If you have multiple computers on a network, NAS is a pretty good solution. As an added bonus most NAS boxes will work as a print server too. My brother and I use the SimpleShare from SimpleTech along with GoodSync.

can you tell me more about that NAS? What if I do have 2 or 3 pc to backup? NAS can handle that? I dont know that thing, brand, model price please ?

thanks for your answers

Well NAS stands for (Network Attached Storage), so you can look up several brands of them. I think Tom's did a review of them. Anyway, I use the SimpleShare from SimpleTech which you can find at many retailers and etailers (including NewEgg). The 250GB version can be found online for about $100.
It's basically a harddrive that has its own ethernet connection and just sits out on the network. I have set up separate password-protected shares on the drive and I just map a drive on my computer to the right folder.
Then I use GoodSync to back up the files, which it can do on an automated basis if you want. The SimpleShare came with software, but I didn't like it very much.