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Reciprocating Computer Backup

Two Computers via Network

Reciprocating Computer Backup, although it sounds somewhat like an engineering term, is really just having two computers (A & B), and backing up A to B and B to A over a network connection. The network can be a crossover network cable between the two, both PC's on a hardwired network, or both PC's on the same wireless network. Note that both PC's must have file & print sharing enabled on the network connection. This can be done several ways:

Windows Explorer - just drag and drop. Make sure you drag and drop the proper direction!
The XCopy command like we talked about with USB Hard Drives. This can be setup in a batch file, tested and perfected, then simplified with an icon on the desktop for convenience and error prevention.
Backup Software like Acronis True Image or Windows Backup can use the other PC as the destination for the backup. Pay attention to the special note on recursion below.

Reciprocating computer backup is great within a home or small office. It helps protect against hardware failure on the source computer and offers a kind of "rollback" to a previous version of a file (or whole PC if using image backup) if a user or somethinge else damages data. What it does NOT protect against is theft (they'll probably steal both PC's), fire, and natural disasters (tornado, hurricane, flood). Some other method must be used for offsite storage of backup data.

SPECIAL NOTE: You want to avoid recursive backups, where you backup A to B then backup B, which includes A, back to A and so forth. Pretty soon you will not only run out of space on both PC's but you will wonder why the reciprocating computer backup takes longer each time.

The easiest way to do that is to have two or more hard disks or partitions on each PC. This is easy to do, but not that common. You reserve the second partition or drive as the backup storage location for the OTHER PC. Then when you backup, you only backup the first partition of computer A to the second partition (or drive) of computer B. No recursion that way.

Note that recursion isn't a problem if you only duplicate one or two directories of data on the other computer and only copy one direction with those directories.

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