Copying vs. Backup...?!? & some doubts...

[rana_kirti]

Hi fellas,

So i've decided to get into the positive habit of Backup. But i had some doubts as to how i want to go about this. I read around and educated myself about full backup, incremetal & differential backup.

But then i was wondering if it was better to do a full Copying and create an identical copy of the data or should i go the Backup route...? What do you guys prefer/suggest..?

I had some doubts...

1. Lets say i backup a folder which has following data...

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I, & J.

Now i understand the backup software will create a single backup file which will consist of... A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I, & J.

And subsequently when i have K,L,M,N and so on depending on incremental/differential option, the backup software will backup only K,L,M,N and create a new backup file in correspondence to the original full backup file. I hope i've understood this part correctly.

However, lets say in the future i don't need A,B and delete the same in the original folder. The full backup will still have A,B in the backup file.

1. Is there a way to delete A,B from the full Backup file as well ? Or will i have to start with a new full Backup which then will only have C,D,E,F,G,H,I, & J....?

Thanks

 

[hhhd1]

take a look at 'synctoy 2.1'

 

[KingFatty]

I'll 2nd Synctoy, it's what I use to synchronize my "archives" data redundantly on 3 different computers that I use.

So while it doesn't create an image that I can restore to the hard drive, I use it to synchronize all my photos/videos/music and other irreplaceable stored data. If a drive fails, I'd have to reinstall windows and all the software, then synchronize the archived data.

I find it's a good compromise, as I rarely suffer a drive failure.

A very neat feature of Synctoy is that you can "preview" before you run the synchronization, and see a list of changes Synctoy will do. One time, I saw that Synctoy was going to update a photo that wasn't new on any computer. Turns out, that particular JPG had become corrupted, so I knew to delete that corrupted copy and use one of the other two redundant copies to propogate to all 3 computers.

I also have a hard drive that is kept in a fire/water resistant safe. About once I month I'll pull it out and use synctoy to update its copy of software, then put that drive back in the safe. Having 3 redundant copies of data on working computers is not good enough if your house burns down all 3 computers, so I think the fire safe is good for resisting hours of burning. Eventually I'll find an offsite/cloud solution too, but right now I'm not using one. Also having redundant copies is good for if you accidentally delete something, then back up the deletions, you can still fall back on the extra copies.

Synctoy just makes it really easy/fast to use "synchronize" across multiple computers/drives, with summary preview info, but it's not good if you want to create a restorable "image" that you could restore a computer with. But you can use Synctoy for other options besides synchronizing, such as where it duplicates new files and not deletions, or does a one-way copy, etc. without specifically synchronizing across both sources.

 

[Coup27]

If you are after a free sync program, PureSync from Jumping Bites is much better than Sync Toy. Sync Toy also has issues.

It's been years since I last used Sync Toy and unfortunately I've forgotten actually how the flaw works but Sync Toy creates hidden files all over your computer which it uses for the sync mechanism. If you do anything funky with the files which takes it outside what has been "logged" by the hidden file, it no longer gets scanned by the sync engine.

It's not the best explination but if you google "Sync Toy misses files" theres loads of links. It is also not a supported Microsoft program and hasn't been updated in over 3 years.

Alternatively, PureSync scans your source folder and destination folder every single time you run a compare. Obviously this takes a lot longer than Sync Toys caching method (for want of a better term) but you get accurate results everytime. I gave up on Sync Toy very quickly because it was not reliable, and I've been using PureSync for years and it's never got one wrong.

Edit: http://go4answers.webhost4life.com/Example/synctoy-21-fails-testing-performs-16677.aspx

 

[rana_kirti]

guys thanks for both the options listed above, i'll look into both and try them out. i didn't even know such cool softwares existed... but we have this forum...

 

[KingFatty]

Have you settled on a solution? I've just upgraded to Win 8 and need to reinstall all my apps, so I'm about to investigate PureSync as suggested by Coup27. Any other options are welcome.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Create Synchronicity. I use it on Win7 64bit, dunno if it works for 8

 

[Binky]

I prefer puresync. Lots of people like syncback. Robocopy, xcopy, and xxcopy can also do this.

Be careful with deletions in the "backup" folder that are based on deletions in the source folder. This eliminates one of the advantages of a backup - recovering accidentally deleted files. I would not consider this sort of mirroring as a full backup, but its a lot better than nothing. I believe that puresync also has an option to delay the deletion for a set period of time - you should consider that option.

 

[Zxian]

Crashplan is a fully incremental backup software that you can use for free. By default, it will keep deleted files and folders for 30 days. You can change this setting in the software.

If you want to delete them folders from your system and your backup archive sooner, you can compact the archive.

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/how_to/delete_files_or_archives_from_crashplan_central

I used to use SyncToy for a while, and then a homebrew script-based archiving system using .cmd scripts and winrar. After installing Crashplan last summer, I haven't had to change any settings. You can even backup to a friend's computer for free! Free, dead-simple offsite backup? What more do you want?

 

[KingFatty]

So I tried out PureSync, but found it to be rather hard to comprehend.

I wanted to choose a pair of existings folders to synchronize between two hard drives, and did not see an obvious way to set this up. It was not clear whether the program was going to use the subfolders in the second drive?

I was not confident in setting it up, so just decided to uninstall and try something else. But maybe someone can explain in plain english how to set up a synchronize between two already-existing folders on two different hard drives using PureSync? I disliked how PureSync was a german program that went through a translation to try to get it into english, because the options and menus were not very intuitive.