Quick question - external HDD's

[TallicadaZ]

Hi all,

I've been tasked with buying an external HDD for our team to backup local files weekly.
There should be about 10 users max, all using laptops.
This isn't a corperate compliance by any means, we are just looking to have local files saved incase of HW fails/big red bus etc...

Question is... As there will be multiple users, what would be the best option
* Buying a HDD and some software which will allow individual profiling (issue being installing SW on each latop - as mentioned before we are doing this locally - IT wouldnt be happy!) giving us one click backup
* Manually dragging docs into seperate folders on external HDD...

After re-reading the above, suppose it isnt really a question, but does anyone know of an easy way to keep it quick and hassle free? Budget is about £100 so no mini NAS boxes etc
1TB should be fine.

Thanks

 

[Digital_Jedi]

Well most external HDD that I have seen come with some sort of backup software on them... They way I run the backups in my office is by setting up batch files to copy data and zip them up and have the files shipped up to an ftp where each person has their own file... then the files get copied from the ftp to a HDD on a server. These file are scheduled tasks so there is nothing to push... just let it run... there are several other options outthere... just got to find the one that works for u.

 

[LA1]

It all depends on what you mean by "back up" , just files, the whole image. Also backing up should not be taken lightly. It is one of the most important processes that can take place. Think about what would happen if your notebook did not boot and you lost everything. Then you would say I would give anything to have the smith account files back again. Sounds like you are not doing this with the IT departments blessings. They should be providing you with a backup sollution...at the minimum a "backup server" or a large hard drive in a server you can map to shares to store data. I would have to say if it is just a few gig of files burn them to DVD or blu-ray, followed by each drive having it's own external hard drive and image the notebook with Acronis...if you put the image in a folder on the external you can also copy files to another folder on the external as opposed to using the whole exteral to image to. What ever you decide to do...take one of the notebooks, get a blank hard drive, install in the notebook and run your disaster recovery plan on the blank hard drive.