Gary, did you look at syncback? From what I've read above, it will do the job you want perfectly. NO image back up though.

Gary, did you look at syncback?

Not yet. I'm working my way through many of the suggested programs. I'll get there eventually. Thanks.

Gary < To those of you who suggested I try Macrium Reflect for file backups ... all I can say is: I did and it's awful. >

Must confess to only useing the free version which does not allow me to back up files & folders & I only use it for imaging.

I guess if you are backing up files & folders you actually need to select them. Just taken a look at an image file and it is
very easy to browse the through. It opens using windows explorer and I would expect 'File & Folder Backup' to do the same.

Does not 'Add Folder' open up in an explorer window?

Have been impressed by Macrium to date and was considering using a paid version. Must download a full trial & put it through it paces.

At present 'data' is simple copied in total to an external drive in a totally uncompressed form using Windows Explorer.

Thanks for the heads up.

Edit
Link1: http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseCategory53.aspx
Link 2: http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50077.aspx

"Does not 'Add Folder' open up in an explorer window?"

No. It just opens a window where you can Browse to add Folders one at a time.

Two more data points in my search for the best file backup software. I've eliminated SmartSync and SyncBackPro.

SmartSync has two strikes against it. First off it's terribly slow. This is a real problem for a backup program that saves its backup into a proprietary data file. Second, it gave me about 100 errors on files it said had either a name or extension that was too long. Strange because Windows 7 Pro has no problems with these particular files, so why should SmartSync? What good is a backup program that won't backup files that I have no problems with?

SyncBackPro also has a couple of strikes against it. First off its user interface is overly complicated for the simple job of creating a file backup configuration. It's so overly complicated that when I was "finished" creating the backup "profile", I'm not sure what it thought I was going to backup. Second, like others programs I've tested, I could find no simple File / Folder view with checkboxes to make my file backup selections easier. I've spent my last 30 years in the computer software industry as a Senior Software Design Engineer. So I know a poorly designed user interface when I see it. This program is high on the list for awkward form and function layout.

The search continues.

Strange, because SmartSync goes pretty fast for me unless you're talking about fractions of seconds. It must depend on the type of files we are each saving. I keep my file names simple and SmartSync has no problem learning my extensions, so again this never came up in my experience. I am now really curious what you will come up with in the end.

SmartSync's backup speed was indicating it would take about twice as long as my leading contender so far - Backup4all. For 500GB of data SmartSync would have taken ~24 hours to backup. Backup4all took about 12 hours. And Backup4all saves to a standard .zip file.

One other thing. SmartSync didn't specifically have a control to pause the backup. But it did have a button marked "Suspend". With the backup nearly complete I pressed "Suspend" to see if this was similar to Pause. It stopped. But when I tried to restart the backup, the entire application window was frozen. If Suspend meant to go into a permanent locked-up state, well then I guess it worked. I had to use Task Manager to kill the process and shut down the program.

Oh, you meant to initially save all files to get started. That took me I think two days across a LAN network! I took that as the nature of the beast because it took twice as long to start using Carbonite. But from then on it's fast since I work with a graphics program in which I save 600MB files every few minutes without ever thinking about it. To backup Vegas is so fast it seems instant.

"I could find no simple File / Folder view with checkboxes to make my file backup selections easier." You couldn't browse to what you wanted to back up?? It's that simple. Can't see why creating a new profile (1 click on 'new') then naming it, then browse to what you want to back up, browse again to where to back it up is "complicated"? Check boxes, no. But Ctrl+click or Shift+click?

Arthur, you're not getting what I'm saying. Open the AppData folder under your user name. Then start opening all the folders under that. You'll quickly understand that if I simply said "include AppData in my Backup" I'd get all of those junk GUID named folders that I don't want. So I'd have to manually add everything except the junk folders to the list of folders to include in my Backup. It's much simpler in an Explorer like view to simply uncheck the junk folders from the Backup file set. I can't explain it any simpler.

"Oh, you meant to initially save all files to get started."

Yes, I was talking about the time it takes creating the initial FULL Backup. I'm using an external dual drive eSATA housing with a couple WD-Black 2TB drives for my Image and File backups.

Well, that never bothered me because it's a one time event. What counts for me is the way the software performs on a day to day basis doing what is expected of it by me, which is every time I push save, the save is recorded on two drives in separate computers. Carbonite does the same but that is very slow; it just can't keep up with the frequency I press save.

Now if I need to go back in time to retrieve something I had done an hour ago, I am confident I'll find it in my SmartSync folder. If I need to retrieve something I made days ago, it'll be either in my SmarSync's secondary, weekly backups, or as a last resort , in Carbonite's cloud.

If my computer crashes, SmartSync will hold the computer from shutting down until it's saving process to the other computer has been completed, even after the crash.

When rebooting Smart Synch would normally sync up with the backup files and overwrite what was placed there during the crash, so I have set SS to wait 20 minutes after a reboot before it starts synching up again, which gives me time to protect the last backup.

There's more that SS does along these lines but I don't want to get into it since this might not be something you are interested in to begin with. My main work is to draw animation frames with a pretty complex software which I am a beta tester of and have to endure frequent crashes.

Have to admit, I tend to back up whole folders. Docs, video, music, projects, etc. I also use 'groups' a lot. I guess you just get used to a way of working that suits you.

This is a very personal thing. I realize that so here's my back-up strategy.

I don't like an application doing my back-up at a high level. ie one click and the back-up program does it's thing. Sometimes you don't know exactly where the back-up file is located, it's generally stored in some proprietary compression format, and you can view/retrieve the individual files and folders without restoring the back-up.

Instead of use a fantastic free program called "Freefilesync."

The way I look at it storage space is cheap so I don't need my back-up compressed. I simply want an exact copy of my files. This way I can look at them, open them from the back-up quickly should I need to, and know the back up worked.

With Freefile sync you select your folder to be backed up and the destination folder for the back-up. Mirror from original to back-up and your done. If you have multiple foders to back-up each back-up can be saved so you can quickly refresh all of your back-ups. I say "refresh" because freefilesync will only replace files and folders that have been changed, making the back-up process very fast. I think there is a way to create batch back-ups but I'm not sure because my computer is organized so that I only need grab a few folders.

I've been using this application for at least 5 years, probably 10 and I can't remember one time where it freaked out, failed, or did something unexpected.

Anyway there's another option if you want to maintain control of your back-ups.

You've pretty much described Syncback Hulk. :-) I like simple. Nice to know there's an alternative. And it looks like it has tick boxes too! :-)

There is also SyncToy. Does anyone know the pros and cons of each?

I started with Synctoy years ago. I don't remember the exact details but I know I switched to Freefilesync and never looked back. You might want to check it out.

Wow, I'd never given much thought to how many ways there were to back up a computer.

I really don't think much about Macrium day to day. I have a disk partition (on a different drive than the C drive!) that is 100GB in size. I've set Macrium up to do an incremental backup every other day at 1am. The most recent initial full backup was July 20th of last year.

So with all those 100-odd incremental backups since, I can go back in time to any particular date (plus or minus a half-day) so see how a particular file looked at that time. Or, I can restore the whole C partition to that particular moment in time if need be.

Now that my backup partition is nearing capacity, I will take the original full backup and burn it to removable media and store it elsewhere, then erase the backup partition and start the cycle over again.

This is what seems to work for me, but of course everyone will have their own criteria that require a different methodology. The process I've described I use only for my C drive. For all my project drives I simply copy them to another drive as circumstances require.