That's it: you're ready. And you save up to around £15/$20 compared with the Mac-specific version. Reformatting also offers the option to use the drive for MacOS's Time Machine backup feature.

Time Machine was a revolutionary approach to backup when it was first introduced. The revolutionary part wasn't the backup process or how creative the user interface was or even how well Time Machine pruned old backups.

All these things had been seen before in backup applications. Hp photosmart c7200 all-in-one driver download for mac osc. What made Time Machine a winner was that it was so easy to set up and use that people actually used it. That's the revolution. Mac users are actively backing up their computers without having to think about the backup process.

What is the best backup utility, and is there a program similar to OS X's Time Machine for Windows? Time Machine is a backup program that automatically copies every file, unless I exclude them, to an external hard drive. I can remove the hard drive, and when I plug it back in it automatically copies over any changes I made. Then, if my computer fails I can restore everything from the backup and it will be exactly as I have left it.

I love Time Machine, but I also love Windows. As I'll be in college, using OneNote and doing homework, if I dont have my data on my laptop always backed up, if something goes wrong I could be in a lot of trouble. Also, if no such program exists, what is the best backup utility for Windows? Well it's not so much having a fresh install of Windows, or an image of anything, as much as I'd like to have all the latest data backed up seamlessly to another drive. I should have mentioned this, but I'd rather have the full-size files rather than compressed files like Acronis and Norton Ghost. I'm anticipating getting a 1 TB backup drive for the 320 GB laptop drive so space shouldn't be an issue with this method. Does SyncToy work well with Vista?

I remember it came out around Windows XP's Power Packs and add-ons. I use a program called Allway Sync. It's similar to SyncToy, in that you tell it 2 folders and it copies everything from one folder to another. In this case.

One internal folder to one external folder. It can sync both ways. But I only have it do a 'one way' sync, so it copies everything from my internal drive to my external drive. It copies new or changed files, and if you delete files, it deletes them on your external too.

It's a mirror of your internal drive. I have it set up like this: C. My Documents ---> P: My Documents C. Firefox Profiles ---> P: Firefox Profiles D: Websites ---> P: Websites D: Pictures ---> P: Pictures D: Music ---> P: Music C: and D: are my internal drives, P: is my external drive. You create a 'job' for every pair of folders you wanna sync. I have it copy all my files and folders, and even my iTunes Libraries and Firefox profiles.

So every last detail is backed up! After it's done, I have an exact copy of the files and folders from my internal hard drives. Not compressed files, images, etc. And best of all, it only copies new or changed files. It's not copying everything every time.

So, it's pretty fast, only taking the time to copy new files. I run it after I dump a large bunch of pictures from my digital camera, and every few days so everything is backed up. It's better to have your files in two places instead of one, right? I tried SyncToy, but I found it sloooow.

So I looked for other options. You can use Allway Sync for free. But if you use it more than a couple times a week, it yells at you to buy the Pro version. I ran it every day or so when I first downloaded it, and I quickly ponied up the $20 to shut it up. It's worth it. *The free version will only copy 20,000 files per 30-day period.

My digital pictures alone are 23,385. Buy the Pro version! I'm an organization freak, so I often rename folders and move files around on my hard drive. After running Allway Sync, those changes are reflected on my external too. I backup every few days to a bus-powered portable USB hard drive, so I can carry an exact usable copy of my files with me wherever I go.