On the program's main screen, you can make a list of the source 
      folders that you'd like to back up, each with various options.
      
      When you've set it up the way you like, just click 'Run Backup'.
      
      You can also click on Save Script and give it a filename; then,
      next week, next month, etc., when it's time to back things up again, 
      just connect your USB hard drive (or other destination), load the 
      script, and click 'Run Backup' again.

      It is the options for each source folder, however, that make 
      Zephyr Backup so handy:
      
            - Choose from two copy modes:
                  - Full Copy - copies all files from the source folder.
                  - Update - only copies new files, or files with a more recent time stamp.
            - Recurse option (copies files in all sub-folders, too)
                  - Plus, a list of sub-folders not to recurse into (optional)
            - Filename filter - only files whose name matches the filter(s) will be copied:  
         *.*   (all files - the default)
         *.txt
         *.mp3;*.aac;*.m3u
         data????.bmp
         *.doc;*.htm*;*.txt;*.xls
            - Include Hidden & System files option
            - And, finally, the destination folder into which to copy the files.
                  - If you like, use the special formatting tokens to dynamically name 
                    the destination folders.  (More on this below)
      
          

      Zephyr Backup also saves a convenient log file for you, detailing what 
      files were backed up, and listing any warnings or errors that occurred.  
      (For example, sharing violations can pop up if files were in use by other 
      active programs, and couldn't be copied.)
        
      Another nice feature is the ability to use special tokens to dynamically 
      determine destination folder names.  For example, if you specified the following 
      destination folders in your backup:
        
      E:\backups\<USER>\
      E:\<DOW+>\
      E:\weekly_backups\<YEAR>_<MONTH>_<DAY>\docs\
          
      ...then at backup time, ZB would translate them accordingly:
        
      E:\backups\Billy Joe\
      E:\TUESDAY\
      E:\weekly_backups\2008_05_16\docs
        
      ...Allowing you to archive your files to many different, "intelligently-named" 
      destination folders.  
            
          

            If your destination drive is a USB (or other removeable) hard drive,
            you should disable write cacheing on the disk.  You can do this 
            by right-clicking the drive, selecting Properties, clicking the
            'Hardware' tab, clicking Properties, going to the Policies tab, and
            then un-checking the 'Enable write cacheing on the disk' option.
            
            When finished with a backup, don't forget to dismount the drive (the 
            Safely Remove Hardware option in your system tray - near the clock) 
            before powering it off or disconnecting it.
            
            If your destination drive uses NTFS, we recommend turning off 
            indexing on the destination drive (or, at least, for the destination 
            folders) so that backups can write faster.
            
            Similarly, you probably want to carefully choose whether or not to 
            enable folder compression (a Windows option) for your destination 
            folders.  If the folder stores media files such as photos, videos, 
            or music, then compression isn't going to save very much space, 
            and will actually slow you down.  But for most other data, compression 
            saves a lot of space, and, if your CPU is decent, can even result 
            in a faster backup!  (For non-previously-compressed data, it usually 
            stores using 30-40% less space and about 30-40% faster.)
            
            If you have a few networked computers, you can back everything 
            up without having to connect the USB drive to each computer.  Just 
            have some of them run a script to back files up onto a shared 
            folder(s) on the main computer, then running another script to do
            a backup to a detachable USB hard drive.
          

    Perhaps one of the more efficient ways to use Zephyr Backup is
    as follows.  The following is generally a good scheme to set up 
    for someone who don't always know (or control) exactly where 
    their data is.
    
    First, add (as sources) the folders that you *know* 
    have important data in them.  For example:
        
        C:\work
        C:\Documents and Settings\ryan\
        C:\movies
    
    And configure the output directories for these source folders 
    to something like this:
      
        E:\DatedBackups\<YEAR>_<MONTH>_<DAY>\work
        E:\DatedBackups\<YEAR>_<MONTH>_<DAY>\Documents and Settings\ryan
        E:\DatedBackups\<YEAR>_<MONTH>_<DAY>\movies
        
    Then add 'C:\' as a source folder, and set it to "Update"
    mode instead of "Full Copy."  This is going to catch anything 
    we missed, but it will always write to the same folder (rather
    that a dated folder) on the destination drive, so, any files that
    were already there (and haven't changed) can be skipped - making
    our backup go MUCH faster.
    
    The output directory should be something like:
    
        E:\ProgressiveBackup\
        
    There is one catch here.  In order to do an 'Update' with C:\ as
    a source folder, it has to scan every single file on your hard
    drive.  *This is very slow.*  We know we don't have to worry about
    copying the 3 directories above (work, movies, etc.) because they
    were covered in the previously-added source folders.  So, let's
    add them, under the C:\ source folder, as "excluded sub-folders":
    
        C:\work
        C:\Documents and Settings\ryan\
        C:\movies
        
    Whatsmore, let's also also ban this huge directory, where 
    user-data is seldom kept:
        
        C:\windows
    
    That's it!  Save your script, then run it.  The first time you
    run it, the C:\ copy will take a long time.  However, on 
    subsequent executions, it will go much faster - it only has
    to scan the folder & file hierarchy, and can likely skip 
    copying of the vast majority of the files.
          

    Note that "user" here refers to the person whose data we're 
    backing up - NOT to the person who is writing the script.  
    If you're a computer whiz, but the script will be backing up 
    the data **of a person who is not a computer whiz**, then
    DON'T USE THIS METHOD.  
    
    The nightmare scenario goes like this: you set up their script; 
    six months later, they install a new program; the backup isn't 
    hitting those data files; a year later they lose their hard drive, 
    and unfortunately, those new data files are GONE FOREVER.
    
    That said - if you know exactly where your data is, I recommend 
    a setup such as the following:
    
    Source Folder     Destination                             Copy method
    -------------     -----------                             -----------
    c:\...\mp3        e:\mp3                                  update
    c:\...\photos     e:\photos                               update
    c:\...\big_data   e:\big_data                             update
    c:\docume~1\ryan  e:\weekly\<YEAR>_<MONTH>_<DAY>\ds_ryan  full copy
    c:\notes          e:\weekly\<YEAR>_<MONTH>_<DAY>\notes    full copy
    
    The idea is that for large data folders, you just copy the files
    that have been added or changed; for smaller data folders 
    (such as 'documents and settings\YourUserName' - which has 
    your bookmarks, emails, calendar, 'My Documents' folder, etc.),
    you can go ahead and do a full copy of the entire folder, 
    into a dated folder on the destination drive.