I use ShadowProtect for that. It backs up each of my ThinkPads to a network share every 15 minutes. The backups take only a few seconds; I don't even notice that they are happening.
I used to use Acronis, and it can also do scheduled backups and it does back up locked files like ShadowProtect does, but with Acronis the incremental backups are significantly larger and take longer. The difference is that Acronis backs up complete files, while ShadowProtect backs up only changed sectors. (At least this is how Acronis worked a couple of years ago; I'm not up to date on any updates.) For example, if you use Outlook and have a 1GB outlook.pst file, each time you receive an email that file is now changed, so Acronis and similar programs will back up the entire 1GB file again. ShadowProtect only backs up the tiny amount of data contained in the actual disk sectors that were updated. I recall seeing a comment from another list member who had had ShadowProtect recommended to them but didn't get these amazing incremental backup speeds with it. One thing to be aware of is that you have to set up a *scheduled* backup for this to work - even if you only intend to run the backups manually. Of course a scheduled backup is what you're looking for anyway. One other minor pain with ShadowProtect is that you have to set up its ImageManager program too. As you can imagine, with incremental backups running every 15 minutes (or however often you schedule them), eventually you get a lot of backup files piling up in your backup destination. ImageManager goes through these files periodically and collapses the oldest ones down into daily, weekly, and monthly backups. Also, if your machine bluescreens, the next incremental backup after that will take a very long time, although the resulting incremental backup file won't be any larger than usual. (ShadowProtect loses the information it needs to do the changed-sector backups, so it has to compare the entire drive with the backup.) Other than that, once you set it up and get it working, ShadowProtect is pretty amazing. Essentially you get a full system backup every 15 minutes (or less often if you choose). http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_desktop.php -Mike On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Donald MacQueen <[email protected]> wrote: > Do either of these programs do unattended backup to a different machine > through either file transfer or ftp? > > I'd be a lot better at backing up my machines if it happened by itself _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
