CD burning software for directory backups?

September 14, 2006 7:02 AM

What's a good (preferably free) CD burner that I can use to do weekly data backups? In the ones I've tried, a "project" is a list of files; I want one that goes by directories instead, so it'll automatically include new files. I'm on WinXP.
posted by futility closet to computers & internet (5 comments total)

As far as free burning software on Windows, CDBurnerXP is by far my favorite. As for doing weekly backups, I assume you want to be able to drag a directory into the "project" and then burn which this does allow.
posted by chrisroberts at 8:01 AM on September 14, 2006

I've used CommandBurner for something similar. It can burn from a folder source from the command line or GUI.
posted by ed\26h at 8:22 AM on September 14, 2006

I highly recommend using an external drive for backing up your data. It's as cheap as CDRs per byte, more convenient, and faster too. Newegg and amazon have has some good deals lately.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 11:58 AM on September 14, 2006

If you use a single external drive, one failure will kill all of your back-ups, which is Bad^TM.
Technically, I guess it would take two failures (main drive and backup drive). Backups are often used to protect against pretty common errors, like retrieving an old version that has been saved over, so a few layers of redundancy is probably worthwhile..

There are things you can do about that, like rotating through two or three physical drives, but don't just use an external drive and assume it is going to be okay.

CDs/DVDs are pretty reasonable back-up media, but for similar reasons it is worth using a couple of different brands, checking the write quality, checking that they read in various drives, keeping the occasional backup off site, etc. etc.

There are lots of other AskMe questions that deal with backups at an even higher level, but if your backups aren't too big for DVD, you probably don't need to worry about them..
posted by Chuckles at 1:10 PM on September 14, 2006

Why limit yourself to weekly backups? If the data is important, back it up as soon as anything has changed. I've been using Mozy for online backups for a while now, and it works effortlessly in the background, checking for changes every couple of hours. It can be set to back up specified files anywhere on your hard drives (i.e. any .doc files) or just to back up anything in specified directories. Mozy is free if your backups are 2GB or less, and fairly cheap if you need more storage.

If you use the link above and try out Mozy's service, we both get a bonus 256MB of backup space (i.e. you get 2.2GB free instead of 2GB). If you'd rather use a referral-free link, use this one.
posted by gwenzel at 2:28 PM on September 14, 2006