Recommendations / Data Backup

[Fairhope]

Let's say someone has an enormous .mp3 collection or a large .mpeg collection that they want to back up to DVD-+RW. It will take approximately 8 to 10 DVD's. Not enough money for an extra harddrive to save them to so the backup media will have to be DVD.

This large collection is also ever-changing, so would like something that will add the new items to the backup without having to erase all DVD's and start all over again.

Does anyone have any recommendations on software for this purpose?

I've only tried Nero BackItUp and would like to see if there are better alternatives. I could not get Windows XP back up to work for me. It kept asking me to put a disc in drive A and I couldn't point it to the DVD drive. How many floppys would it take to hold about 40 gigs worth of data?

Thanks,

[proggy]

How many floppys would it take to hold about 40 gigs worth of data?

About 40,000 floppies... give or take.

Seriously though, it sounds like you are better off with an additional harddrive.

Or, you could always seperate your collection into folders and backup the folders onto individual dvd's as necessary.

[BJ_M]

you can buy 40-60 gig hard drives for 40-75$ , even less on ebay sometimes ...

[Fairhope]

Everyone at work agrees with you - that I should look into getting an external hard drive to back this stuff up.

My current computer setup doesn't have USB2 ports. Do you recommend I purchase a USB2 card or do they make an external harddrive that will connect via firewire?

Does anyone have any recommendations on what type of external harddrive to look at? Is using an external harddrive as safe as backing up via DVD media?

Thanks,

[BJ_M]

there are 100's of external cases that are firewire

[superfuzzy]

I have about 60GB of data files - jpg, mp3, wav, etc that I want to back up to DVD -r.

Is there a way to span the backup automatically over MANY dvd's?
I do not want to compress the data or backup to proprietary file formats.
Everything is already backed up to external USB drives -- this is to store off site.

I use Nero, but it is a pain calculating the backup size - not too big and not too small - to efficiently use all of the DVD.

Thanks!!!