A Backup question..... (Safest way for a non tech-person?)

[DroogieX]

Hi, I was reading some topics here about backup methods, I'm not a really tech people but I can understand with a little more info, ok, I want to know which is the safest way to backup my music collection, I have now a 250GB HD (Western Digital) that I almost filled (mp3's), I just have 5GB left and I want to backup all of that to another new hard drive, I use a laptop and my HD with music is in an external USB 2.0 enclousure, I want to backup to another external USB 2.0 HD, same as the one I have, so far when I move files from my laptop to my HD I just use the windows explorer and "Ctrl+C" the folder I want to move and after it gets copied I check if the file size is the same to "make sure" it was copied ok, if so then I delete the one on my laptop, but, I don't know if that's a secure method for backing up files, someone here mentioned "SyncToy" as a good way to backup but I don't know if I should need to sync folders, does that means that I have to have both HD's connected always in order for it to work?, 'cause I rather want to back up and store in a safe place one of the HD's, I'd like an utility that can check also for the integrity of the files as they are copied, so far I haven't had any corrupted files while "backing up" the way I do but now that I want to backup a whole HD of 250GB I want to do it in the safest way.....

Any comments apprecieated

Thanks

 

[grego]

The method you currently use will work just fine. You really don't need any softare if all you want to do is a one time back up of data (like the mp3s). Just swap in an empty hard drive and copy from your current drive to the empty.