Freeware Backup Solution?

[133MHz]

Could somebody recommend me a good freeware backup program? I want to backup my hard drives to a bunch of DVD-Rs. Hopefully something that can do incremental backups so I only have to burn one DVD or two containing the changes since the last backup. Thanks

[UglyJoe]

I haven't used any, personally, but this should be a good list:

http://lifehacker.com/398229/five-best-windows-backup-tools

Their "Hive Five" features usually cull together some great apps.

[UglyJoe]

*bump*

Free copy of Paragon Drive Backup 9 Personal, today (4/8) only!

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/paragon-drive-backup-9-personal/

[133MHz]

Thanks UglyJoe! That software is just what I needed! I even got the Professional version, bought a bunch of DVD-Rs, had evertyhing ready for backing up my data when...

Woke up, HUGE BSoD on my PC. Pushed the reset button, and the BIOS hung up on the hard drive detection part. Uh oh... . Tried the hard drives on another PC, and they made the other PC hang up at the POST too! I was starting to panic for my data! Unplugged the second hard drive, and it sorta worked. XP crashed at boot time with a 0x7B error (hard disk related). CHKDSK /P repaired a bunch of errors but still no luck with booting. Safe Mode didn't work either. After several hours of black magic, my XP booted up fine and my data was there! I immediately started backing up everything to DVD-R. In the meanwhile I took out my second hard disk and plugged it into my sister's PC with a USB to IDE adapter. It wasn't recognized at first (uh oh) but after several attempts of putting the hard drive in different positions etc it got recognized! I was able to recover most of the data on it, all of the important stuff and fortunately what I wasn't able to recover is easliy replaceable.

Talk about bad luck... having your system fail the same day you planned to back it up for disaster prevention .

Fortunately I managed to recover everything. I swear I almost had a stroke.

[UglyJoe]

Whew.  Glad it worked out for you in the end.  Did you grab the program when it was free or did you have to end up paying for it?

[133MHz]

Grabbed it while it was free, but had to get the Pro version because the free version could only be installed on that specific day. That means if my hard drive crashes later in time and I need to recover my data, I''d have to install the software again, and as you guessed it, I can't.