Suggestions for Backup Software?

[Cyberion]

I'm looking for the latest and greatest software for backing up my local machines to external hard drives. My requirements:

1. No cloud services. Local only.
2. Must allow incremental backups
3. No proprietary software formats. Native file storage. Zip files are OK.
4. I'd prefer to pay for it (vs free) but need the ability to use one license for the household. (Too many machines to purchase individual licenses. )
5. Allows me to select which files, folders, etc. I want defined in the incremental backup process. I don't need to image the whole drive, just want to select files, folders, etc.

For years I've used various "free" apps that worked just fine for the needs noted above. But many of these free ones have since sold out to invasive self-installing spyware and bloatware such as Conduit. That's why a prefer to pay.

Any suggestions?

[CGT80]

You didn't list which devices or OS's. I have verizon backup on my phone, which is cloud based. I copy all my phone files to the computer once in a while.

For my PC, I have win 8.1. It has a "file history" section that will backup to an external drive. I have a usb 3.0 1tb drive. You can choose folders, IIRC, but it is pretty basic. It copies the desktop, photos, music, videos, downloads, etc. folders that are part of a windows user profile. I keep my data in those folders and the desktop of course and it copies it to a folder on the backup drive that is called file history. The files are just a copy that can be opened like the original. I don't think anything is proprietary. Along with that, I made backups to dvd's which are the m disc and are supposed to be stable for long term storage.

You have great points about not using free or proprietary software. I really like the backup feature of win 8.1 for this reason. My data is only 32 GB. My dad's desktop is win 8.1 also and I used a usb thumb drive for the windows backup. I also made a copy of his data on my external drive. I thought a usb drive was good for backup and I had dvd's with my photos on them. Of course I got lazy about doing my manual backup and I lost a hard drive. The data was recovered and put on the external drive. I thought that was a good storage device. It seems there is always someone who thinks each type of storage is not reliable. The truth is that they can all be unreliable and they are all pretty cheap now. The usb 3.0 external drive is very fast when used with the ssd on my desktop machine. The auto backup and multiple devices is cheap insurance. I was tempted to get a usb adapter for an old eide 500 GB drive, to use for back up to my backup, but a 1tb external usb is only $70. The adapter could cost half that and the drive would be slow and old compared to a new compact drive.

[ElDub1950]

tagged because I'm looking for good incremental backups too. I hate having to backup ~300 gigs of data when only 30-40 gigs is new/changed.

[ocabj]

gnu tar

1. Not cloud.
2. Supports incremental: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manu...tal-Dumps.html
3. GNU is pretty much standard.
4. Free.
5. Supports excludes: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manu...n/exclude.html

[Cyberion]

Machines are a mix of laptops and desktops. All running windows os. But those range from win xp pro, to win 7 home edition, to win 7 pro, to win 8. I've used external drives for backup, connected via USB, for years. Some drives are 250gb, some are 2TB. When the latest gets near full, I buy a new one. The contents on these drives, most importantly, can be from Linux machines or even win 3.x. It does take hours to run a backup. I generally do these quarterly and run it while sleeping. The method has to stand the test of time. I'm not sure if a win 3.x backup process could be read by win 8 machine. Maybe, but backward compatibility isn't guaranteed.

[Creampuff]

You said you would prefer not free, but I'll toss this in anyways. I've been using SyncToy. It works for me. Nothing fancy but it does the it's job.

[spyde12]

I use Acronis for my full and incremental backups. They allow you to create a boot partition that will allow you to restore a backup (saved on a different volume i.e. D:\) without a boot disc. You can create your backup and save locally, or onto an external/network drive. You can also explore your backups and restore specific files, basically like a file explorer.

[CGT80]

Last night I looked at the backup from win 8.1. It appears it backs up new files or changed files, but doesn't delete files you have deleted. I had some desktop files I deleted from my computer and they were still in the backup. Looks like I will have to keep an eye on how the backup works or do some research as the backup option in windows doesn't really say what it does.

[Cyberion]

gnu tar

This might work. I'll have to check it out. But I'm not a command line guru so it will take a little effort but may be worth it.

I use Acronis for my full and incremental backups.

I just bookmarked acronis so that's worth checking as well.

Last night I looked at the backup from win 8.1. It appears it backs up new files or changed files, but doesn't delete files you have deleted. I had some desktop files I deleted from my computer and they were still in the backup. Looks like I will have to keep an eye on how the backup works or do some research as the backup option in windows doesn't really say what it does.

In my opinion that's what it should do. If you delete a file accidentally it's stored somewhere else. You must delete it on purpose from the backup.

So here's one of my scenarios I'm protecting against. Wildfires force immediate evacuation. All the portable hard drives are tossed in duffle bags and we're good to go. I can read the contents on any device with a USB port. Linux machine, apple, anything. The desktops will burn. Don't care. I have the data.

The other, is the flood. No kidding. I learned the hard way you're more likely to suffer from water damage than fire. Water pipes can and do break above and water will pour through the ceiling and flood the floor. Luckily I was home. All portable drives are now stored in a fireproof safe and well above the floor.

Also if the house survives the fire in the first scenario then it will be because the firemen flooded your house with water. Hope this helps someone before too late.

So back to finding the best backup software process. My backups are overdue.

[high_revs]

I use acronis home edition (still). I think you can consider it proprietary (.tib extension). You can't open the file w/o acronis installed. Sure a .tib file will open in windows explorer, but that's only because Acronis is installed. At least you can view/peruse your backup files in file explorer rather than going into Acronis each and every time. You can schedule backups.

the drawback to the home edition is it cannot restore a computer image that is encrypted, or has encrypted partitions. One member here kindly suggested the enterprise version of Acronis but I didn't want to pay out of my own pocket when the company won't for my work files. But I can backup and restore files from an encrypted drive. It just won't restore the entire image of the computer (including OS, etc).

Because you have so much to backup, different OS'es and different machines, why not look at something that can run off 1 system? sure Acronis will do that if you map the drives and are always there (or re-map the drives again after reboot if not pervasive). But you can run out of drive letters if each machine has multiple directories location sto backup, i.e. not everything is in your profile if in windows. what I mean is you want to backup my docs, music, etc in your windows profile but also c:\temp\.

that might start getting into enterprise level s/w though and a dedicated backup server to manage all backup services for all your machines.

[the86d]

In a perfect world I would use Linux on the back-end in a Kernel RAID config (no special hardware to try to find and it will work on ANY machine OOTB, and cheaper than hardware RAID that may not be supported in the future), with Win desktops using robocopy & Linux desktops/notebooks using an easy script, so I only have to do a full-backup once and every initiation of the backup script would do an incremental.

I have been using similar scripts on my Windows Server, and work computer "robocopy D:\ X:\ /b /r:0 /mir /COPYT /DCOPY:T /M /XD "D:\System Volume Information" "D:\$RECYCLE.BIN" /LOG:%userprofile%\Desktop\BackupLog.txt /TEE". My boss actually backs-up his entire drive, including temp, \progra*, and Windows folders, which seems stupid to me.

On the back-end, maybe dupe the data once a week to a secondary backup medium (even if just another HDD).

K.I.S.S.

All the lower-end desktop solutions I have tried in the past either stopped working in the next version of Windows (Windows got discontinued too), or the software company got sold and no longer support the version/data-files.

[wheels]

I'm on the road right now but I was looking for a S3 backup and came across one called duplicati. Seemed pretty slick for what I needed and seemed to have other options that may fill the bill for OP.

[pc_load_letter]

http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm

Truly free and ZERO adware, popups etc etc.

Fit's all your requirements.

I use it at my work to back up several servers with several terabytes of data.

If you want an easy to use disk imaging tool, pick up Macrium Reflect Free ed. Works great for whole disk imaging.

[Cyberion]

http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm

Noted

[LAmike]

Find a good synchronization tool. The best thing is that backups are done at the file level and you don't have to do a restore to access the files; if a machine crashes, you can just plug the drive into another machine, copy what you need and keep going.