easy way to backup storage drive?

This is all in my htpc case.
C: 64gb ssd with windows and all programs
E: 2tb seagate (storage)
F: 2tb seagate (backup of storage)

Is there an easy way to backup everything i put into the E: drive automatically to the F: drive

Personally, I don't like my backups attached to anything. I have had a couple of lightning strikes that fried a system, even on a UPS. So if it were me I would put that extra 2 TB drive in an enclosure and connect when your ready to do the backup.
As far as backup software. I have been trying Free FBackup http://www.fbackup.com/ and so far like it. Set it up to do a mirror backup and after the first time, it won't take long. If you want to leave it attached, you set up FBackup ( or many others ) to do a scheduled backup.

Quote from dn3g3l : This is all in my htpc case. C: 64gb ssd with windows and all programs E: 2tb seagate (storage) F: 2tb seagate (backup of storage) Is there an easy way to backup everything i put into the E: drive automatically to the F: drive

I agree with the above, buy an external case for F drive, I had a PSU go and took my mobo and half my hard drives.

Personally I used syncback a while ago and it worked well. You could use something like it and make a script and have it run every night so at the minimum you loose a day or 2x a day so a half of days of data.

Otherwise a raid 1 with your current setup and all data will be written to both drives.

Quote from mrbobhcrhs : I agree with the above, buy an external case for F drive, I had a PSU go and took my mobo and half my hard drives. Personally I used syncback a while ago and it worked well. You could use something like it and make a script and have it run every night so at the minimum you loose a day or 2x a day so a half of days of data. Otherwise a raid 1 with your current setup and all data will be written to both drives.

mirror raid is not a backup solution. Anything you screw up on the storage device (delete important files and such) is immediately unrecoverable. And as others already addressed it's not safe to put the backup copy on the same system, logically or physically.

I'd use rsync or rsync-like tools for backup. Google "windows rsync like" reveals deltacopy and unison. Personally I use MS synctoy and put the script in schedule tasks to backup my documents (on windows) to network storage and it's been working fine.

I like Easeus Todo Backup, I found out about it a couple of years ago, it has since become a very popular download at cnet, free version does a lot more too these days. http://www.todo-backup.com/produc...ftware.htm

thanks for everyone's advice. external does seem to make the most sense.

Windows batch script...

Quote from dn3g3l : thanks for everyone's advice. external does seem to make the most sense.

I have to agree with the external, in fact I do backups to 2 externals because I have had both the pc and one of the externals (the dreaded old 1.5 tb silver seagate click of death drives) fail on me on the same day, thank goodness for the second backup. And since I have been a victim of fire before, I always keep one of the externals in a different physical location.

I don't know if you have a Fry's [frys.com] near you but they have a 2TB external for 109 in store, I guess since WD bought Hitachi they are calling it HGST now.... Amazon [amazon.com] has it for 119 currently. I'm hoping that external drive prices continue to drop... They also have an enclosure for 24.99 if you're considering that route.

I do the 2nd drive manually (the backup to the backup) from time to time, perhaps once a month, and I keep it in the safe to prevent it from getting knocked around or stolen, plus on the off chance there was a fire.

Quote from RockySosua : I do the 2nd drive manually (the backup to the backup) from time to time, perhaps once a month, and I keep it in the safe to prevent it from getting knocked around or stolen, plus on the off chance there was a fire.

I also do an occasional manual backup on one drive (more like quarterly or half yearly ) and use backup software and the second drive with frequent incremental backups to the second drive for file changes etc. I trust the manual backup because it does not rely on any software to restore to the PC in case something goes wrong.....

Quote from silvery79 : I also do an occasional manual backup on one drive (more like quarterly or half yearly ) and use backup software and the second drive with frequent incremental backups to the second drive for file changes etc. I trust the manual backup because it does not rely on any software to restore to the PC in case something goes wrong.....

These days, you almost have to. The price one can pay for losing data forever is too costly and painful, be it precious pictures, your lifetime music collection, or important documents.
If you don't have the super important ones in triplicate, it may cost you one day.
A lot of people believe that a duplicate is enough, but just as an example, I've seen a fellow lose both his PC's hard drive and the back up external at the same time, most likely from an electrical spike (we have bad electricity here).
They lost some really valuable stuff.
Doing it the way you do it sounds just right.
If you ever lost the last 6 months of data, it might hurt but that would be tiny next to losing it all.

I agree, you can't be too careful. You read all those horror stories of new families losing all the pics and vids of their little ones. I finally got a new PC a year ago, my old PC had suffered much from rolling power and random outages in the past, so before my new one arrived I bought a UPS battery backup for it. And I try and make sure when I'm doing my backups to plug the external drives into the battery backup + surge protected outlets on the UPS instead of the regular surge protector so hopefully that protects against both outages and against spikes since the UPS outputs a pure sinewave. And it can take a long while to backup 1 to 2 TB of data! I've read the average life of an external drive is 3 to 5 years so I highly recommend blu-ray data discs too especially for permanent files like music, pics, vids. Someday I will get around to doing that...... I'm not one to trust the cloud, especially with private pics and vids. Once you put it on the net it stays out there somewhere on some server......

If you're trying to make F the same as E, the most hands off way is software mirroring. Windows Servers have supported this a long time, and I know 7 supports this feature. Less sure about XP and Vista, but wouldn't be surprised.

For detailed instructions, http://www.howtogeek.com/?post_type=post&p=17926

It protects again sudden drive crashes and data that gets corrupted locally on a drive, but does not prevent bad data from being written to both drives.

Better than Raid 1 in my opinion because you don't have to deal with Raid Drivers and specific raid controller to get your data back should the mirroring fail.
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However, I back to the cloud and highly recommend it if your internet bandwidth supports it. Yes I have to pay for it. About the price of a hard drive every year.

But the monitoring and uploading is all automated, I also get sequential back ups, unlimited storage, safety of being offsite (fire, flood), and the ability to access files from my smartphone or a different computer should I so choose.

Quote from AVANT : For detailed instructions, http://www.howtogeek.com/?post_type=post&p=17926

Thanks, I did not know about mirroring, seems like same as keeping drives in sync. I've often thought of doing RAID, but I think if I ever go that way, I'll try this instead. That may be a viable option for one of the "backups". I tend to avoid syncs though because if I delete from one drive it gets wiped from the other drive so I like incremental backups to save me from myself.