I've been using a Dell at work for at least the last 5-6 years, and I have 225 GB of random things on here, that I feel should be backed up. My office does not have any sort of IT, and this is mainly me just being proactive. I've heard some weird noices and clicks in the mornings for the last few months, might be nothing (is there a way to test?), but figured it doesn't hurt to do.

I have a Western Digital 1TB Elements portable USB drive, and I'm using Windows 7 Pro.

I'd essentially like to just backup everything, the files have got pretty unorganized over the years. A crap ton are on the "desktop" location in a folder, and then there's a ton of other random folders all over. So to ensure I capture everything, I'd like to do a backup of the entire PC.

Does anyone have any programs/tools they use to make this simple? I do have a program that came with the WD drive, and there's also a Windows Backup tool, but I've seen a ton of 3rd party applications online for this too.

Lastly, how do I get my PC to recognize the drive? I plugged it into the back of the PC and it's "on" but not showing up or recognized. Sometimes I plug into the front or disconnect and replug it shows up, but doesn't seem to always show up. Are there better USB ports to use vs. others? Front, back?

Thank you so much!

 

I like DriveimageXML. Pretty simple to use, free for personal use, and it's backup is browsable in case you only need to restore a single file or folder. Works pretty fast, too.

https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

 

In terms of your USB drive not being recognized, can you try plugging it into a different computer and see if the same issues persist? Trying to determine if the issue is with your computer or the drive/cord...

 

I'm sort of in the same situation you are. Take the time and organize your shit so it's all in one place.

I put a network drive on and just drag and drop the entire contents into a dated folder on the drive like once a month or after I've completed a large project or something.

 

I actually just came across this while studying for a backup certification for work (Dell EMC Data Protection and Management). The Windows backup utility is actually a decent, no frills option (I use it on my work laptop to have a backup whenever it needs a major Windows 10 update). My last job used Veeam on servers and had positive results with it, and there's a version for a typical desktop (I use Macs with Time Machine at home so I can't give a personal experience). But yes, absolutely keep some kind of backup. Data is valuable, and if that drive in the PC dies, your RPO (recovery point objective; how far back you can go with file changes/additions) goes from whenever you last took a backup to when you first started saving to that drive.

I'd see the options as one of these:
1. Onsite: External hard drives are cheap (especially a 250GB/500GB for your capacity needs), or you could even go with a high capacity flash drive (also not expensive if you look at like the Micro Center branded ones and that won't have the same physical point of failure that an HDD has).
2. Go to cloud. Google has a Backup and Sync application to back up to Google Drive. If you can get your amount of data down to under 200GB (clean up maybe some old downloads or something on the computer), then that'll cost $3/month or $30/year (or $10/month or $100/year for 2TB but that would leave a lot of underutilization for the scenario). While that would have a subscription fee, Google handles the data availability and integrity to make sure it's always there and intact for you.

As far as the drive you have now for backup, try another computer/cable. If it's the same outcome, then that drive could be dying too. I had a WD that did the same thing - spun up but wasn't recognized. But I still trust WD over Seagate.

 

A follow up, months later, but finally got another external HD and it recognizes it well. I plugged into the front USB and it shows it every time I boot up. I downloaded the DriveXML program as recommended, and it seems pretty easy to use. I tried this morning and it give me an error, "Data File Create Error", basically saying it cannot create the .dat file on the external drive. I believe this may be due to me being logged in as a non-admin user. I tried logging in as an admin, but do not have the password or disk they request. I don't recall ever using the admin login, and the computer has been in the office for a while. I asked around and nobody seemed to have the admin password. Any suggestions? I have access to full computer for anything, but just never used that login for anything. Could this be causing the error mentioned above?

Thanks.

 

Hmmm. I recommended that software and it works flawlessly for me. I don't think the admin issue should cause you troubles, though. How far into the backup process did you receive the error message? Right away, or did it run for a while before giving the message?

I don't know how much extra room you have on your internal HDD, but if you have enough room, try to create the backup and have it write to a folder on your internal drive and then copy it to the USB drive. This will help determine if the issue is with the USB drive or the software.

Also as a test, find a large file (movie perhaps?) over 1GB and see if you can copy it to the USB drive. It may be a connection issue with the USB device for sustained writes.

 

Burn everything to CD



Or zip disks.