Put My Files in a Safe

Has CNET done a review of backup utilities? I looked around and didn't see any. I recall a recent article/review from ZDNet rating backup software pkgs. Can CNET be far behind? ~Rob

After a few decades of trying countless backup programs, today I use simple "sets" of backup media (in my case DVDRW). I have 3 sets I rotate as I erase and record My Documents and a few more items.

Why has it come to this?

-> Almost any backup software is broken in some way (NTBACKUP is not so much broken but from another century).
-> Many backup softwares only run on Windows or MacOS or such.

Simple works without such issues.

Bob

Hello,

As Bob always says... don't keep all your eggs in one basket. (I'm paraphrasing, but this is the jist of it.)

I've had very good luck with a piece of shareware called Argentum Backup:

http://www.argentuma.com/

It's very simple... I set it up by pointing the interface at the local directories I want to include in a back-up (i.e. My Documents, Desktop, E-mail identities, my little USB Flash Drive, my Favorites)... and once a month I plug in a external harddrive and click ''go''. When's it's done... I take that USB drive and throw it in a firesafe.

It can even be set to back-up automatically, allows for different back-up ''jobs''... allows for zip compression or direct file copying.

Becasue I don't trust even the USB drive to run forever, I do the occasion back-up directly to DVD-RW. It's just a matter of changing the back-up's location in the Argentum program.

The nice thing about the program is I can also set it to back-up an entire directory minus any specified folder. (For example... I might not want to include ''My Videos'' in each monthly ''My Documents'' back-up).

To answer the orginal question... there is a piece of software called "Folder Guard", it can be used to lock up specified folders with a password. It actually makes them "disappear", even to Window's search engine when in the "locked" mode. Back in the day, there was a "lite" version that was free... not sure if the free version still exists.

TTFN,

~Wayne