I have a new portable harddrive and want to backup one of my drives to this. Can someone recommend a free backup software that will enable me to do automatic backups, including incremental backups? The software I have doesn't enable me to backup a drive to another.
I hope to backup to an online site, as well.
Also, I have a harddrive that I had accidentally reformatted (and lost the entire drive's contents)! Is this still okay to use? Is there a way to "test" a harddrive?
Thank you for your help!
Have you tried a recovery software program for the reformatted drive. There are a few out there that will let you try it out to see if you could recover what was on the drive.
Or does it not matter, because it was just a secondary backup. If so than use the drive.
As to backing up Win 7 does have a backup program that can be found in the control panel. Many portable HDs come with backup software. Did you check to see what was on the drive?
Usually, new EHD come with backup software. Was there a cd in the box? The software would be on there if it was included. If you're running Windows, you can just use the backup that is already built in to the operating system...
Thanks for your responses, Judy and Cat! I’ll apologize in advance for my long-winded response!
Yes, I DID try a recovery software...no success until I discovered "MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.6", and it was free! Wow! What an awesome program. Incredibly easy to use and great at recovering lost files. The only drawback is that it recovers the files but without the original title of the file...so cinmcw_kit name_paper1, for example, is named as #201369. So you need to go through each and every image in MANY recovered folders to see what it is. But it's worth it. I was devastated when I lost every creation I had ever made, preview templates, tuts, templates, etc. Many months later, I’m still going through the files, and a week ago, I discovered 100’s of files that were lost…I'm still so thrilled!
Sadly, those were the original files, and I did not have a backup. I lost a hd a year before that, so I’ve been so anxious to get a backup plan in place but so intimidated by the whole backup process. For quite some time I have been backing up files to DVDs…this is not working for me…it’s an incredibly long process for all of the files I have, doesn’t enable me to have “updated” files, etc.
I'm a bit embarrassed to say I have six LARGE-capacity portable/external harddrives! Scrapbooking has been a life-saver for me because I'm disabled (for many years) and developed a serious illness over the past few years, it is my saving grace and one thing I CAN do. I just received two hds as gifts, so I finally have storage space. I want to backup two hds. I think, after tons of reading over the past year, I understand the process a lot more, but I need the software to figure it all out...when to download, how/when to record changes made to files, etc. I’ve tried several programs over the years, but I never feel 100% confident that I’m doing what I need to do. None of my hds have come with software, except maybe the Seagate. Problem is, I moved a few years ago, and I have, oh, about 70-80 boxes in storage, and not one was labeled (my parents packed them for me)!
I never even thought of using my Windows 7 backup program! Thank you for pointing this out! I've had a rough bunch of years and learning new software or reading instructions for appliances....stuff like that is one of the things that has become difficult for me. Hopefully, it’s pretty much self-explanatory! I'm going to check this out...thank you! I really appreciate your help!