What is a good backup software, or should I do it manually?

[L7vanmatre]

Looking it up online doesn't give me too much useful information as far as I've seen.

I have an external drive I intend on using as backup, and just copying one ~250 GB drive on this Windows 10 PC was a bit of a pain already due to all of the "you need permissions from TrustedInstaller to make changes" and it's just me trying to copy stuff I might want over, like the Program Files folder.

I'll also want to browse and delete individual files at my leisure, which is why I don't just make some sort of 1:1 copy in a .iso. (As well as, last I recall, the empty space will count as space in the .iso)

Edit: I also want to exclude certain folders in my backups (e.g. folders of my games) but Windows Explorer doesn't seem to allow that. It looks like I have to copy it all over, then delete what I don't want.

I'm intending on using this drive as various systems' backups, as it has more space than all of the systems combined. (Some of these systems will include Linux-based OS's, which is the main reason of why I ask if there's some sort of FOSS third-party application that I should use instead that works a bit better for what I want that might automate or simply handle certain tasks I might not foresee)

Since this is somewhat reliant on the OS's I'm doing it on, I found it most fitting to put it in here.

[mtono]

you want to backup the program folder. in this case i would choose a backup software, because then it is safe that the backup is perfect. i dont really know, but a backup software knows how to backup.

[chiefputsilao✖️ping]

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-free-backup-software

[Supafly]

Personally I just create a system restore backup view windows once a week. External SSD so it's pretty quick.

To make it quicker I partitioned my OS drive to 120GB. Games and other none important stuff are on another partition.drive.

[Electric Cupcake]

Macrium Reflect Free.

[L37]

Try veeam agent.
I mean their backup software is mostly targeted at enterprise users, and has much more capabilities when used with dedicated backup server and such (even free version), but standalone agent is pretty good at what it does.
Has flexible backup schedule, can work with external storage conviniently, etc.

As for opensource... well, linux has enough options for making backups. On windows it is different. Everything i tried turned out to be extremely unreliable, which is BAD for backup software.
Also be careful with backup software for windows, some of it does REALLY bad stuff which interferes with OS interatios with storage hardware. Like acronis, for example, installs its own driver which acts as intermidiate layer between OS and storage hardware. It is used for advanced stuff like ensuring hot backup consistency and such, but it is also a failure point... like if there is a bug in this driver you will loose data, not only in backup but live data too. It can (and does) also introduce performance bottlenecks and some other issues. Do you research before installing anything. This is also one more "+" for veeam agent i mentioned before - it uses built-in windows fs shapshots (vss) to ensure hot backup consistency and only offers optional driver for changed block tracking (faster incremental backups) which i personally never tried.

[emoticorpse]

I use Beyond Compare. It isn't freeware but if you get bored, check it out. Might be your style of software and worth it.

I use Aomei Backupper for system backup/restore. It has a free version but don't think is open source.

[Nepgear]

Robocopy, it's part of Windows. Here is the documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

[mtono]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Nepgear:

Robocopy, it's part of Windows. Here is the documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

thumbs up! did not know that...ty

[L7vanmatre]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Hugsie Muffinball:

Macrium Reflect Free.

Looking at its feature comparison on its site, the paid "Home" version has all the features I want (including the "exclude specific folder" thing that I've been having a lot of trouble finding even *mentions* of online), but the free version doesn't do the basics of what I want, but thank you for the suggestion! If I have $70 to spend on something like that, perhaps I will, haha.

Opprinnelig skrevet av chiefputsilao✖️ping:

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-free-backup-software

It was really late so I tried some. I settled for Cobian Backup 11 since it backed up as files, and it had a "shutdown when done" feature so I just set it to backup and shutdown, and went to bed. Thank you for the list anyhow, but I'll keep looking to see if I can find a better one.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Suicidal Monkey:

Personally I just create a system restore backup view windows once a week. External SSD so it's pretty quick.

To make it quicker I partitioned my OS drive to 120GB. Games and other none important stuff are on another partition.drive.

Fair enough. Does it backup as browse-able files, or is it all in one big (or set of) file/s?

Opprinnelig skrevet av L37:

Try veeam agent.
I mean their backup software is mostly targeted at enterprise users, and has much more capabilities when used with dedicated backup server and such (even free version), but standalone agent is pretty good at what it does.
Has flexible backup schedule, can work with external storage conviniently, etc.

As for opensource... well, linux has enough options for making backups. On windows it is different. Everything i tried turned out to be extremely unreliable, which is BAD for backup software.
Also be careful with backup software for windows, some of it does REALLY bad stuff which interferes with OS interatios with storage hardware. Like acronis, for example, installs its own driver which acts as intermidiate layer between OS and storage hardware. It is used for advanced stuff like ensuring hot backup consistency and such, but it is also a failure point... like if there is a bug in this driver you will loose data, not only in backup but live data too. It can (and does) also introduce performance bottlenecks and some other issues. Do you research before installing anything. This is also one more "+" for veeam agent i mentioned before - it uses built-in windows fs shapshots (vss) to ensure hot backup consistency and only offers optional driver for changed block tracking (faster incremental backups) which i personally never tried.

Thank you! I tried installing it and such, but it wanted to format my entire external drive, and looking at the backup options, even the "file level backup" seems to just backup as image when reading the description. Which is fine, just not what I was personally going for.

It does look stable and decently cross-platform though; has a Linux version as well as decent customizability, so I get why you decided to recommend it. I gotta get to working and stuff today, but I think I'll keep it installed and will try to mess with it a bit more later. This might be more ideal than the Cobian software I installed last night, despite the image-based stuff.

Opprinnelig skrevet av emoticorpse:

I use Beyond Compare. It isn't freeware but if you get bored, check it out. Might be your style of software and worth it.

I use Aomei Backupper for system backup/restore. It has a free version but don't think is open source.

They seem interesting, and no worries about the open source thing; I was using FOSS as an example of "that magic high quality FOSS program that fixes all the issues and woes, and has all the features you'd want", since they always seem to be hard to find on search engines (until they get mega-popular) and yet a lot of knowledgeable people use them. (e.g. VLC, OBS)

Opprinnelig skrevet av Nepgear:

Robocopy, it's part of Windows. Here is the documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

Huh, nice. Looks like even Windows has some stuff that's command prompt-only, hahaha. Thank you, it looks like it might answer for most of what I want!



Thank you all for your suggestions!

[mtono]

thats it sometimes: people that progrm windows compatible software use windows functions that are somehow hidden in the OS called windows

[Supafly]

Opprinnelig skrevet av L7vanmatre:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Suicidal Monkey:

Personally I just create a system restore backup view windows once a week. External SSD so it's pretty quick.

To make it quicker I partitioned my OS drive to 120GB. Games and other none important stuff are on another partition.drive.

Fair enough. Does it backup as browse-able files, or is it all in one big (or set of) file/s?

Literally everything on my C: drive...can select other drives too but I'd need a much bigger drive for that. Precisly why I partitioned the drive so C: was fairly small. 120GB seemed reasonable. An SSD to use externally using a Sata to USB cable or a 2.5" USB enclosure is fairly cheap these days. And results ion a quick backup.

Wouldn't be the best if it was a large C: drive or I included other sources to backup.

[Woodster]

Opprinnelig skrevet av emoticorpse:

I use Aomei Backupper for system backup/restore. It has a free version but don't think is open source.

I use Aomei too and was impressed enough to pay for the Professional version :)

[Electric Cupcake]

If you're comfortable with commandline, you can just boot to a live disk and dd the entire thing.

Though a SATA dock is an extremely useful thing to have for emergency backup dumps. With an M.2 adapter for future-proofing.

[L37]

Opprinnelig skrevet av L7vanmatre:

Thank you! I tried installing it and such, but it wanted to format my entire external drive, and looking at the backup options, even the "file level backup" seems to just backup as image when reading the description. Which is fine, just not what I was personally going for.

It does look stable and decently cross-platform though; has a Linux version as well as decent customizability, so I get why you decided to recommend it. I gotta get to working and stuff today, but I think I'll keep it installed and will try to mess with it a bit more later. This might be more ideal than the Cobian software I installed last night, despite the image-based stuff.

Interesting, either they changed something or it just shows how different usecases may cause different questions. I do not remember it trying to format external hdd, but may be i just did not pay enough attention to remember because i was using dedicated backup hdd anyway.
They have pretty nice docs available online, it is often possible to find the answers there.

For images - yes. You basically get one large file for full backup and then one small file per incremental backup. It is actually quite convinient as you can easily move it around if you need to. You can do file-level restore from them though, essentially it mounts any restore point as a folder and you can browse it/access data as you wish. Something like this is inevitable if you want to create a lot of restore points with compression, deduplication etc, without relying on filesystem capabilities.

If you want to just create a copy of your files on external HDD, not proper backups with resore points and such, your best bet will, most likely, be already mentioned robocopy. Small script in task scheduler should do it. However IMO proper backups are better - they provide history and protection against data corruption unlike simple mirroring. Say you caught a virus that encrypted your files, you did not notice it fast enough and your "mirror" got overwritten with the same encrypted files => you loose your data. In case of backups this will simply mean that your last restore point is broken - you simply restore from previous one. You can also combine both approaches - incremental backups usually take very little space, so you can have your mirror created by robocopy for fast access and your backups created by some bacup software. That's what we do at work with critical stuff...

You can also take a look at burp[burp.grke.org], it does not use images and is open source, but it is also client-server and requires linux server as it relies heavily on filesystem capabilities.

[Bastet]

Macrium Reflect will allow you to browse the image & can be set to automatically create a Full then differential images (the paid version allows incremental images to be created, protects the backup drive from malware/Ransomeware with its Image Guardian).
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree differences between versions on this page too.