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Backing Up One Computer to Multiple Hard drives?

Discussion in 'Windows - General discussion' started by RedTech, Apr 26, 2011.

  1. RedTech

    RedTech Member

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    If you have more data on a hard drive in your computer than what would would fit on one of your external hard drives can you use two or more external hard drives to back up the data on the hard drive inside your computer? In other words can you backup a computer to multiple external hard drives if their is not enough space to do it on one external hard drive? I have two external 1 terra byte drives and am running windows 7 home premium 64 bit.
     
  2. fanwars

    fanwars Regular member

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    Yes, there are backup programs which are able to split system images. I think every proper software could do it somehow (e.g. multiple DVDs).
     
  3. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    What is it your wanting to backup exactly,normal stuff like photo's,movies etc can be dropped n dragged or use a syncing software to sync all drives.

    System images like a backup of your OS aren't large when using an imaging software as it will use compression so with say acronis 11 which i use,13gb of data is now 9gb give or take a few mb & that's using default compression,it has two more settings below that again,bear in mind any compression can make data recovery difficult however for an OS it don't matter,i would recommend no compression for any real important stuff like family photo's,better to get larger hdd's pref 2tb or wait till the 3tb drives drop in price


    Acronis 11-commercial not free

    Norton Ghost 15-commercial not free

    Easeus-free
    http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm

    minitool-free
    http://www.minitool-drivecopy.com/
     
  4. RedTech

    RedTech Member

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    Their is not an exact thing I'm trying to back up. What I do is go to the start menu in windows 7, type in backup, and run the backup program that came with the operating system. I'm not sure if the reason its so big is because it might be making a system image with it or what. Any advice on what to do would be appreciated.
     
  5. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    If your not selecting the data then it must be creating a complete backup of the whole drive,check if you can select specific folders if there's nothing you'll have to decide whether to use one of the programs i've mentioned,if you want set & forget acronis 11 has continuios backup so any changes made are automatically backed up,tho i'm not sure if it can split it between two hdd's,treesize (free) can be used to determine what folders are what size
     
  6. RedTech

    RedTech Member

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    Thanks for the help scorpNZ. I'll give it a shot when I get home.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2011

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