Need a software recommendation

A friend recently had a hard drive go out, not completely, we did save 95% of the data, but the drive needed to be replaced. This whole experience really opened his eyes to the necessity of regular incremental data back up to an external drive. So, now that everyone is bored and has quit reading and has moved on to other more interesting threads, what can you folks recommend for a data back up utility. Daily incremental back ups is what we're after, but we need some flexibility also; like being able to do a manual back up whenever desired, easy schedule changes, reliability, you get the picture....
Thanx.

 

Have you looked at the Backup utility that's standard on Windows systems? I use it at home for backups. I don't have it set for automatic/scheduled backups but I believe that can done.

 

Yeah... it would probably work but I think he wants something with more flexibility.... I dunno... :confused I know I looked at it, but I'm not sure if he even knows of it's existence.... I'll tell him about it anyway. But in the meantime, any other ideas? I've looked thru the BackUp section here at MG and got some ideas from there. I guess I'm looking for some recommendations for the apps I've seen listed here from people that have used them and have a good basis for the recommendation....

 

This might be one to take a look at http://majorgeeks.com/Cobian_Backup_d4739.html You can read some user reviews at http://www.snapfiles.com/opinions/Cobian_Backup/Cobian_Backup.html Only significant negative comment I noticed was that "it will not delete files in destination if in the source the files where deleted."
I don't have actual experience with; quite likely, someone here in the forum is familiar with it and/or others.

 

Oooops. I forgot to mention that freeware is GREATLY preferred in this case if at all possible...
Thanks again.

 

I looked at DriveImage XML and it looks like this is primarily for whole drive/partition imaging... what we need is something that will allow us to specify certain folders or directories and back them up as specified. We might need different schedules for different folders, and be able change the schedules at will. For example: lets say we backed up My Pictures on Monday. Then on Weds, I added a photo sessions to My Pictures on drive C:. We need the backup util to only add the new photos to the backup either automatically (like it would perform backups of specified files every time the PC is shut down; or every night at 8pm; whatever) or manually by clicking on a "Back Up Now" button. Perhaps I'm looking for too much in a free app????

 

Have you looked at Cobian yet? I believe part of what you're asking here can be accomplished by creating different backup jobs - one job for certain folders/files, another job for certain other folders/files, etc. - and scheduling each job to run as needed.

 

Yeah, I just did. Looks good. Thanks for the link to the reviews. It looks like the only drawback is some type of issue with deleting files from the destination if the source files were deleted first (???? not sure if I have this right or not). Maybe the destination files need to be deleted before the source files? Who knows.... anyway, it looks good and I'll give it shot. But I'm always looking for alternatives... Any other ideas out there?