can anybody reccomend a good - free download - back up software for a windows laptop..

I have an external drive i want to back it up to.

Any reccomendations much appreciated

Cheers!!!

You could use the built in backup / restore within Windows.

Otherwise something like

Partition-saving
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/en/index_frame.html

Cobian backup --- pretty well bullet proof now on version 9 I have been using it since version 4.

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

I use it for unattended backups over a network it has never failled and it has saved my bacon more than once.


It will do compressed or uncompressed --- compressed format is standard ZIP so you aren't locked into using the software.

It will also backup over FTP or use SSH for SFTP.

Beware MS Windows own backup MS have a long track record of changing backup formats resulting in backups that are unreadable by later versions of Windows.

I run a Mac with TimeMachine, but some of my collegues in the lab (where data loss is really no joke!) use Cucku... and it appears to be brilliant - local and off site backups...

Cucku backups

NTDWM by theway!

Chris