The philosophy behind the Daisy AutoBackup/FTP is very simple :-

• The files and sub-directories are taken from a directory and copied to another directory, drive or computer. In some cases the path can be modified to include say the day of the week or other date/time based information.

• Exact copies of the files are made without modification. This means that restore is a simple matter of a direct copy.

• Files are not copied if the files on the source and destination are identical. This minimises disc errors.

• Locked files are not copied, as this will mean that the copies are not exact. So if you need to copy your Outlook files, the program must be shut first.

In some ways this may seem a wasteful process, but in most computers these days, the disc space is more than adequate. 100Gb is not untypical and many users never create much more than about 2Gb of data.

See backup drive for full details on how to choose a safe one.

You should also bare in mind that there are two main uses of backup :-

1. The security backup where files are kept for some time and a backup is usually performed once a day or after a major update of data.

2. The working backup performed at a much higher frequency, where such things are program source files are copied regularly, so that mistakes can be easily recovered.

A security backup should never be stored on the same drive as the data, whereas a working backup should be stored where it can be easily retrieved.