I wouldn't be surprised if SyncToy actually ran robocopy in the background (since they are both from Microsoft).

Not that I use them all, Robocopy gives me a whole lot of options when backing up data. And I'm an old DOS-Head anyway, so going to the command line is not a problem. I've written some pretty convoluted batch files (and in a past life, I had to write some pretty detailed Novell Netware login scripts to support multiple business units sharing the same networking resources), so that doesn't bother me. I get that it's Greek to a lot of folks.

But you definitely want a utility that just copies the differential (new/changed), and as an option, deletes the files on the destination that are no longer valid, in order to mirror your backup target to the source content. It definitely saves a lot of time.

I lost one of my drives recently and was back up and running in no time (well, except it did take quite awhile to copy all the data from a USB2 external drive back to the new hard drive).

And while we are on the subject, don't forget an imaging solution for your boot drive. I have lost my boot drive before, and was back up and running on a new drive in about an hour as if nothing had happened. That versus re-installing the OS, all the applications, all the custom configuration, all the authorization/authentication, etc. It is definitely worth the cost of an external drive and an imaging application (I use Acronis True Image, but there are free ones available). When I managed a computer lab working at the Federal Aviation Administration, we imaged all our Windows servers using the free G4L (basically Ghost For Linux). Never had a problem with it and it also worked over the network. But the interface might scare some people off, even though for us it was rock solid.

John

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