Backing up some photos

[Haiku32]

Going to buy my dad an external hard drive so he can back up all his photos (tens of thousands of photos on an old 120GB hard drive with no backup at all can't be good).

Only needs to be around 100 - 250 gb (room to expand) and usb.

Is there anyway to have a kind of set up where whenever the external hard drive is connected, it will transfer all the files in a certain folder to it (recognising what files are already on there, and adding the ones which aren't), kinda like itunes does with your library. Just to make it easy.

Thanks guys.

[s3ds]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncToy
also
http://www.tgrmn.com/
also maxtor one touch drives have some software IIRC you push the button to backup
http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h907.htm

[Time Bandit]

Only needs to be around 100 - 250 gb

You might find you get better value for money with a larger drive as the prices are pretty similar. I bought my brother A 500GB WD in August and the 640GB version from Scan at £57.47 is cheaper still.

A 250GB Maxtor for example is currently £61.51 at Scan.

Is there anyway to have a kind of set up where whenever the external hard drive is connected, it will transfer all the files in a certain folder to it . . . kinda like itunes

I prefer to use separate software myself, it tends to give you a few more options and I trust it more. I wont let itunes do anything to my stuff automatically - it has wiped my ipod once to often. The Freecom drive I use came with backup software which was pretty awful so I now use SyncBack which is freeware and works brilliantly. You can set up different backup profiles and even schedule them individually which I don't think SynchToy does. The gui has basic and advanced options which are dead easy to configure (you can copy or sync files from any folder/s to anywhere you like). It will also let you do a "dry run" so you can see if it does what you want it to.

You can download and read reviews of this and others at cnet.