Digital Home Thoughts: Seagate Replicates Apple Time Machine

"Seagate's objective in designing its Replica backup kit was to make a replica of Time Machine, but for Windows PCs. It works exactly as promised, and in similar fashion to Apple's no-brainer backup system. Plugged in, its setup process was numbingly simple: agree to the TOS and you're about done. It then records a complete backup of your system and begins keeping track of changes you make. By cleverly journaling and organizing each sequential backup, the archive is unlikely to get substantially larger than the system it's attached to. As a result, you can dip into your machine's history, recover files, and restore the system in the event of disaster. It comes with a special boot CD to help in the event of the latter."

Backups are so very important. I'm really surprised Microsoft has not made more of an effort to publicize the tools already available. I've been using Microsoft Sync Toy for a while and been very happy with it. I have an automated daily job that syncs all my data to a second physical drive in my desktop. I've also got two manual jobs that I run less regularly, one syncs to a network drive and the other to a portable drive which I keep off-site. If you are looking for a turnkey solution, with very little setup on your part, this looks like the way to go.