I got a computer for my Mom for Christmas.

I am looking for some software that can do backups do CD, with scanning capability, VERY easy to use and as inexpensive as possible.  It would be great if I had some control over what gets backed up, not just “everything in this folder” since there will likely be folders that don’t need backing up.  It would also be good if it reminded you that it was time to do a backup on some sort of schedule since she’s getting older and probably won’t remember to do it.

Do you guys have any suggestions?

SmartSync Pro

Norton Ghost seems more oriented to full system or partition backups and not simple file back ups.

AndyMac, what do you mean by “scanning” ability…did you mean backup to CDs with “spanning” ability (i.e. multiple discs used for one backup job)?

You may want to look at Dantz’ Retrospect (http://www.dantz.com/en/products/win_professional/index.dtml) which is a pretty well known program. Free trial version might make it worth looking into.

Yeah, mainstream commercial choices are really slim in this arena. I guess $129 MSRP vs. $69.99 MSRP is a little more. At least Symantec is integrating Powerquest technology into their products now. An option is Acronis’ TrueImage 8.0 software which does essentially everything Ghost 9.0 does at $49.99 MSRP. Acronis has a pretty friendly interface and easy scheduled backups as well. I like that you can mount backups as volumes and simply drag and drop files.

i’ve used veritas and ghost for a long time, long enough to barf. per gooves suggestion i purchased Acronis several months back and have been pretty much pleased with the product. it works fine, better than ghost or veritas. there is ample support for ATI @   .
good luck!
jigs
ps i’ve noticed that with ATI, and ghost, having a large backup harddrive is best to store the backup images and incrementals. ATI’s recovery disk will recognize usb harddrives if they are NOT connected to a hub, but directly to your TR.  So in case of complete catastrophe or TR HD replacement, the restore is a breeze.

Thanks all for the suggestions.  I did try HandyBackup but it seems like all it really did was “automate” the backup.  It also seemed a little “buggy” on my TR for some reason, crashing a couple of times.

For now I will just show my Mom how to drag her data folders to the CD drive and do the burn.  That will save us some money for now.  The computer and all was probably enough cost for this month.

When her backups get a little more complicated I will go looking again.

[quote author=“AndyMac”]Thanks all for the suggestions.  I did try HandyBackup but it seems like all it really did was “automate” the backup.  It also seemed a little “buggy” on my TR for some reason, crashing a couple of times.

For now I will just show my Mom how to drag her data folders to the CD drive and do the burn.  That will save us some money for now.  The computer and all was probably enough cost for this month.

When her backups get a little more complicated I will go looking again.

there ya go, simple is sometimes better and cheaper. make sure u use restore points for the system then - wish there was a way to better automate that, like create a restore point each log on - it seems like MS does it randomly for ya…