Do any kind of search for “data backup” and you’ll see thousands of options. From freeware to “professional” level software that allows journaling and revision copying. If your one of the many that just want to have a  backup of your data and don’t want to learn about Raid 0+1 or other overly complex things, here’s your solution.

It’s called SyncToy and its developed by Microsoft specifically for photographers that need to add a layer of redundancy to their data.

There are only two things you need to run SyncToy.
1. The program itself.
2. An extra hard drive (the easiest way to go about this is buy an External Hard Drive and just plug it into your machine via USB, Firewire or ESata.

Installing the software is just as simple as any other basic program. So there’s really no need to go over that. In the following, I’ll show you the big picture in setting up your machine so your data is better protected.

First thing you’ll want to do is plug in your new hard drive and launch SyncToy.
1. Select, “Create New Folder Pair”
2. Select which drive or group of folders you’d like to back up. (Don’t worry, you con do this process as many times as you like)
3. Select where you’d like to save these files. (This is where your new hard drive that you just plugged in is located)

After you’ve selected your folders to backup. It will ask you which way you’d like to back up your data. In this window you’ll see a few different options. You’ll want to read these options until you understand them. This may seem a bit tricky at first. But once you select a way to copy your files, you’ll never need to worry about this again. So take your time reading them. If you don’t care and just want a backup, then just choose, “Echo”.

Then it will ask you to name your backup. Be as descript as you like. This may seem common sense. But being descript will help avoid confusion later if you have multiple copies.

After you’ve completed your setup,it will take you back to your Main window. You’ll then have a few options available to you, but you only need to worry about two of them:

1. ”Document Backup: You’ll see in the below image I only have two options to back up my data (F Drive Backup & Documents Backup). What I do is just select the words below these two that says, “All Folder Pairs”. What this does is select ALL my sync’s I’ve setup. So if I have 15 syncs set up, it will select all 15 and run them.

2. After I’ve selected the folders I want to backup. Then click on “Run All”

That’s it.

NOTE:

When you’re running this for the first time or you have allot of data (more than 2GB) that hasn’t been backed up. I’d wait till the end of the night to run this. It will take a little while to run and is very processor intensive. So any other programs will have slower response times. You can still surf the web though since surfing the web takes up almost no processor speed.

If you have any questions regarding setup or how having problems making this work. Leave a comment and I’ll help you out or point you in the right direction.

-Jon