I have a lot of invaluable information on my laptop. I have a desktop upstairs in my house that I use as a miscellaneous/file server computer. I backup all of my data on that machine and I use my laptop as my main computer on which I do all of my work. They're connected through my house's wireless router. Basically, I make sure that all of my important files are backed up in the subfolders under "My Documents" so I don't lose anything that's saved under some "my programs" subfolder. When I backup the important information like website stuff that might be under "C:\inetpub\wwwroot" I'll move it to a subfolder somewhere in "My Documents" so none of my work is lost.

Every two weeks or so I will copy the entire contents of my "My Documents" folder on my laptop to where it would be on the file server's hard drive if I were using it as my computer. Kind of like a mirror of my laptop. And then every once in so often I will make a hard backup of my information which fits on about 6 DVDs. The contents of my entire "My Documents" on my computer contains about 15 GB of information. Not a whole lot if you think about it. However, uploading the whole thing takes quite a while. It takes close to two hours over my network. The reason it takes so long is because it's copying and replacing a shitload of files that are already on the file server. All I really want to do is copy the new files on my laptop that aren't on the file server. However, if you don't want to replace the older copies of the files you have to answer to the prompt "No, I don't want to overwrite these files." For each and every file--which in my case is very large. I have a lot of files and it's out of the question to answer no to each one.

Focus:
All I want to do is copy the new files and add them to the store of old ones. If I can do that, backing up won't hardly take any time at all. I believe that's called incremental/differential backup. But I don't want to get any of that backup software. I want Windows to copy my files and only my new files to the file server. Do any of you have any ideas for this problem? Or do you know of any good freeware that would do exactly what I'm looking for?

Alternative focus:
Information is increasingly important today and well-calculated use of computers can give you a huge advantage and to be able to keep a huge store of information while keeping it easy to manage and access. I'm sure a lot of you have incredibly important data on your hard drives. How do you protect/backup your data? Well, you can answer that second part if you don't have a good answer to my real question.

I do not know the answer to your question, however I only advise backing up on DVD+R. Using an electronics device to do precisely the same thing (store data) is not advisable.

suppose you backup filename.ext to the server.
after you have backed it up do you ever add anything to filename.ext on your HDD?

I do not know the answer to your question, however I only advise backing up on DVD+R. Using an electronics device to do precisely the same thing (store data) is not advisable.

That's what I'm doing right now. Eventually I'd like to upgrade to Blu-Ray, seeing as that's the format that appears to be winning.

suppose you backup filename.ext to the server.
after you have backed it up do you ever add anything to filename.ext on your HDD?

Nope. Everything is sent to the server as is. All files on the server are in the same form as they are on my laptop. It's basically a mirror, so in case my laptop is stolen (What a horrible thought) everything I have is still on the other computer.

I've used the integrated Windows backup utility, but it's dumb. All it does is make the whole backup a single file. Maybe I haven't been using it right. Maybe I'll investigate a bit further.

On a side note: you guys do backup, don't you?

Yeah, the Windows backup program does indeed appear to support incremental backups. Looks like that is what I will be using. Disaster averted!

Thanks everyone!

On a side note: you guys do backup, don't you?
the only "backup" i do is save dowloaded files when my download drive is full.
the drive is 20 GB and i burn to CD-R.
i really need to get a DVD burner.

I don't backup, really. I've probably got 5GB worth of stuff I just couldn't lose. I've got about 350GB of stuff I could lose, but wouldn't be happy about. Planning to get another drive soon just to mirror everything.

I know it's not a nice thought, but if there's a fire in your house all of your data is gone. Maybe it's worth keeping a few DVD's in other places - relatives house, work, etc.

Explore synchronizing the 2 folders. The software to do so is available both on Windows and as third party software. Then you can back up your 'mirror' at your leisure.

Generally I use DVD-R discs to back up data i want to keep. The disadvantage is that of course the most recent backup would be the one I did the last time I felt like backing up :) I still have about 40 to 50GB of un-backed up data - knock on wood.

Phonetic...if there's a fire in my house the absolute LAST thing I'd be thinking of is my backed up data :|