I did a complete backup of my data files on my Dell Inspiron 15 laptop a week ago (after I had a scare when I got a "Checking media - fail - no boot device found" message that turned out to be the HDD had come loose from the socket because mounting screws were missing). The backup of about 250 GB took several hours to load onto my 2 TB external USB drive under the folder "Profile1". Just now I decided to update the backup and had ASSumed that it would just find the files that had changed and add them to the folder, or create a new folder. But what I found was that it had erased all the previous backup files and is now going through the long process of backing up all the files again.

But what if there is a problem during this backup? I know better now, and perhaps I will get a second external drive and alternate backups. But I really want a backup utility that can do an incremental backup and not erase the previous files at least until the new backup is complete.

I had problems with the Windows8 backup "File History" because it got confused if the HDD got disconnected (the USB cable seems to be sensitive). I can't find the backup utility that I used on my Win7 machine, so it must have been replaced with this new thing. I had problems with the old one with Win7 because it choked on some long file names, and instead of just flagging them and proceeding, it just hung up and waited for user input or simply gave up and closed without notifying of the failed backup.

I am very hesitant to pay for an "upgrade" if the basic version works so poorly. I think I will write my own so that I will be able to control how it works and be assured of success and data integrity. Or I'm sure there are shareware and freeware and open source apps that do a much better job for free or for a few dollars donation to deserving programmers.

Well, after at least an hour I have 48 GB of backup files and the progress bar shows about 10%, which I know is not correct. Last time it took about 15 minutes to show at all, then it moved very slowly, then went a little faster, and then slowed to a crawl again. There is no indication of what percent is complete or how many files have been backed up or how long it has taken and estimated time to completion, as was there in the Win7 application. It seems like the new Win8 apps try to look pretty but don't give you much information. And Win8.1 was really bad - some of my software would not run at all, so I had to go back to 8.0 which uninstalled almost everything. Thanks a lot, M$!