What is your workflow? Are you using tape, or are you using SD cards that are copied over to hard drive and then reused?

If you have just one copy of your source video files I'd assume you'd want ASAP to make a backup that is kept in a different location. Me, I still use tape, so my tapes are the "backups" that are stored elsewhere. I know one of the reasons for RAID is redundancy but I once had a power supply failure that took out multiple hard drives at once. Even with RAID I'd still want something that was independent of my work area. Putting raw video into the cloud would seriously tax my internet connection, I'd think.

Of course you also need a backup of your veg files. Then in a worst case, you can re-import your raw video and the most recent veg file and you are back in business quickly. But everyone has a different workflow so what has worked for me wouldn't necessarily be the best plan for you.

Five years ago the big name in automated incremental backup was Acronis. I still use it, but others believe the latest versions have become a bit bloated.

I have been using 'Casper' for quite some time and it works great!

http://www.fssdev.com/default.aspx?adc=1

NovaBACKUP by Novastor

http://www.novastor.com/

Norton 15 works with Win7 and saved my bacon on my c: system drive. It makes incremental changes on the boot drive. I use it for all my media and projects. You not may think it important to backup until one day........! Also I use a ICYDOCK tray to mount my backup drive then remove the drive after backups. This is very important

I haven't researched a lot of these mentioned, but I use Backup4All.
At the time I chose it, I couldn't find another software that would backup to BluRay as well as HD and intelligently split files across multiple discs. The software will do mirror backups, incremental backups and if you want zipped files, you can set the level of compression. The only time I use that is if I'm going to retire a drive.
When I shoot, I backup the SD cards to BD on a daily basis as the footage is ingested and then weekly incremental backups on the system. I should probably do that daily as well, but we always save each day's .veg files to two drives.

Before you commit to any specific backup software,you should pay careful attention to the most important feature of any backup program - restoring your lost data. I spent a lot of time researching backup software last year and thought I had found the best solution; a program called NovaBackup. The interface is a bit odd, but it's lightning fast and seemed to offer more capabilities than I could ever use. Then I ran into the need to restore a single lost file, and the stark reality of how bad this program was became painfully obvious.

I needed to restore a single file; and that's where the problem lies. The designers seemed to envision that global file restoration was the primary, if not the only intended use for the program. After my initial full backup, I had been running incremental backups to minimize the number of files being backed up. In each incremental backup, the program simply created a new backup file for each subsequent backup, without maintaining any central index of where each backed up file has been stored. It turns out the file I needed to restore could have been saved in any of the several dozen incremental backup files created since my full backup, because the file I needed was added to my PC after the initial full backup. And once it was backed-up, it was marked as unchanged, so it didn't appear in any subsequent backups.

When I asked their Tech Support about this, they seemed surprised that I only wanted to retrieve a single file; so their answer confirmed what I already knew. I had to manually open and search through each incremental backup until I found the one that contained my missing file.

There's a Source Forge backup program I've used in the past called Areca Backup that supports what I needed. But it's not very fast, and it saves it's backups in zip files. It also has a very poor interface to target specific sets of files for backup. But it is free.

The best solution I've found for doing good reliable backups is me with assistance from Beyond Compare.
I have one or two 2TB external USB drives plugged into my editing systems, keep all files for each project in their own folder on my internal drives and regularly copy all the latest project files etc to the external drive. I use Beyond Compare to do quick checks that I do have a complete mirror on the external drive. When the external drive is near full and all the projects on it completed it goes into the cupboard.

I use WhereIsIt to catalogue the drives in the cupboard.

Advantages of this approach is I don't need any software to access my backups and nothing ends up running in the background on my editing system. It's also giving me archive and backup at the same time.

Bob.

I have used True Image from Acronis as my default backup program for years. You can back up full drive partitions, folders or individual files. You can also restore individual files from a drive image backup. They also offer a 250GB cloud storage option for $50/year with access from mobile devices. It has never failed me, ever, and it's only $30 through July.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/#overview

I have tried a few free backup programs, but now use Acronis TrueImage Home 2010. I had to upgrade to that version when I upgraded to Windows 7. I run it from a CD to restore the system drive rather than schedule it and do a reboot. At one point during the restore process, I have to do a right-click to envoke a menu in order to continue, but apart from that it is pretty straight forward. You can restore individual files, but it is naturally slower than copying normal files on a disk.

I prefer to keep as much data off the C: drive as possible, so that system images are kept small. I backup data only when it changes.

Acronis gets good press and ratings. I've never tried it as I've had Paragon for many years.

Another vote for Acronis

I much prefer Macrium Reflect to Acronis. I had a bad experience with Acronis. I had been using it for several years and bought the upgrade to use with Windows 7 including bare metal restore. It failed to install, help was useless and I ended up having to reinstall everything from scratch.. Never had similar problems with Macrium and restore my operating system about once a week.

Gary James said, "Before you commit to any specific backup software,you should pay careful attention to the most important feature of any backup program - restoring your lost data."


Before I went to Casper I was using Norton Ghost. I would make my clone backup and it would tell me that it was successful. So after some time, just out of curiosity I decided to see if indeed it was successful. So I put the clone drive in my computer and started it up. It went through all of the startup sequences just fine until it got just before the point of going to the desktop. It never made it. I tried different ways of working with it but no go. I even did more clones with it to see it I could get it to work. Never did. So I went looking elsewhere. I do not know if I was doing anything wrong or not and I no longer cared because Norton Ghost was too difficult to figure out anyway. At least at that time it was. It was Norton Ghost 3. Casper is the friendly ghost!!!

Good thing I did that test because soon after if I had not done so, I would have lost everything due to a hard drive failure. I had just started using Casper before the hard drive failure.

Always test to see if you REALLY have a backup. Never assume that you do just because the software says it was successful!

Casper can use an explorer mode to get a particular file if I want.

Hmmmm... A lot of info there guys, thanks!

My main system drive is a mirror, so I am not totally concerned about that, I am mostly worried about my RAID, where I keep all my project files, etc.

All of my files are digital (no tape) and I want to backup only specific folders, then nightly have the backup note only changed files and update to them.

I'll look at all the options here.

Thanks!

Chapman

This thread has some good info on the topic:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=848828

Beyond Compare 3
http://www.scootersoftware.com/

I use this xcopy command: (I organized the switches spell out "very hi cd") (;

xcopy [SRC_DIR]\*.* [DEST_DIR]\*.* /v/e/r/y/h/i/c/d >>[DEST_DIR\LOGFILENAME].TXT

/v : Verifies each file as it is written to the destination file to make sure that the destination files are identical to the source files.

/e : Copies all subdirectories, even if they are empty. Use /e with the /s and /t command-line options.

/r : Copies read-only files.

/y : Suppresses prompting to confirm that you want to overwrite an existing destination file.

/h : Copies files with hidden and system file attributes. By default, xcopy does not copy hidden or system files.

/i : If Source is a directory or contains wildcards and Destination does not exist, xcopy assumes destination specifies a directory name and creates a new directory. Then, xcopy copies all specified files into the new directory. By default, xcopy prompts you to specify whether Destination is a file or a directory.

/c : Ignores errors.

/d[:mm-dd-yyyy] : Copies source files changed on or after the specified date only. If you do not Include a mm-dd-yyyy value, xcopy copies all Source files that are newer than existing Destination files. This command-line option allows you to update files that have changed.

>> : XCOPY will append the log to any existing log.

> : XCOPY will create a new log each time script is run.

I have been using Acronis True Image Home 12 Plus, to backup my SSD main drive and it has worked flawlessly for me. I do full image backups quite often, and when I do some tweeking to the system and things get out of sorts with programs I just reinstall the OS back to a previous time when everything was working right and things are back to normal other that adding a few updates. Further more I save all Media and Veg. files onto separate hard drives which are also backed up and you can access your work right where you left off. With Acronis you can do a full image backup to another hard drive before you finish for the night, program it to verify the data and then have it automatically shut down. You can do the same for a reinstall, the software has been bullet proof for me, from past to present, and couldn't live without it.

I've been using the free version of SyncBack for a few years now: http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

It does everything that you want (which is exactly what I use it for) and more. saved my bacon on a couple of occasions. :-) And it's...err.....FREE! ;-)

not quite sure about what the op was backing up....

i simply have two win7 c: drive images backed up in rotation (never had a problem restoring from a win7 image - though i wouldn't trust system restore further than i can dribble...)

all my work is carried out on fast internal drives and immediately backup to ex usb3 hd's. once a project is completed it's backed up onto it's own hd as well as to another larger compiled project storage hd.

docs and pretty much everything else, (bar music, video) are on both hd and skydrive / googledrive

seems a whole lot quicker than using backup software

Ushere said:
[I]" seems a whole lot quicker than using backup software"[/I]

Exactly. The OP is not trying to clone a system drive, only backup files.
If the OP had lots of money to throw at the problem then a SAN box with backup would be the answer. Here background tasks can run on the SAN hardware without stealing cycles and bandwidth from those accessing the data. Great idea if you're a post house with big clients and budgets.

For us lesser players much simpler and cheaper solutions get the job done. I guess one could run two NAS boxes and use Nsync but from my experience trying to edit using media pulled over a network is problematic.

Bob.

I have several computers that I maintain and Acronis has been very reliable for me. Lots of options and easy to use.

I downloaded the Acronis 2013 Backup 30 day trial and ran an overnight backup on my Windows 7 Pro C: drive. This morning I successfully restored a single file I randomly picked from my backup. I've very happy with the results.

Compared to NovaBackup, Acronis has some serious limitations on creating custom backups that target just specific files or folders. But for the 99% use case of complete drive backups, I think it's far easier to use.

So, I placed my order, received my serial number, and have switched to using Acronis. Thanks to everyone who suggested this program.

I am not sure what the fuzz is about all the different backup software. I have been using Windows 7 own backup without any problem. I can schedule it, make system images and restore a single file too. I run it also on my servers for a simple reason, it is build into the OS and doesn't interfere with it. I used it on my servers since Windows NT 3.5 and love it; simple, reliable and free.