Backup just to have another safe copy of files

[sm625]

Thanks for the reply. However, what benefit does using an image have over having an exact copy of all folders and files as they are on the main drive?

Images copy and restore much faster than a bunch of files. Sometimes the benefit can be 10x or more. You can prove this yourself by copying 1000 4KB files onto a thumb drive. If you zip them into one file and then copy it, it will copy 5-10 times faster, even if all 1000 files are uncompressible.

The other added benefit is that you also get file compression. That usually doesnt mean much for mp3s and videos though.

There is actually not much benefit at all for imaging media files. Imaging should be used for your OS partition, and your media files should be on a separate partition. To do a full system backup, I clone my OS partition, and then just manually copy/paste my media folders onto the backup drive. Actually I run a script that does this, but all it is doing is copying.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

SyncToy. It's free. Use it. It's by MS. Safe. No ads. No begging for money. No trials. It does exactly as you want. I use it to mirror a server with a large external HD. I connected the HD, click on synctoy, press start, it copies over only the files that are new/changed. Done. Perfect. No dealing with images. No proprietary anything. Just mirror any folder/tree from location A to location B. You can mirror network share to network share, drive to drive, network to drive, drive to network, whatever. Don't waste your money on anything anyone mentioned here.

With those capabilities, that SyncToy looks promising for my household's needs and my personal needs. But let's add sm625's comment to the discussion.

Images copy and restore much faster than a bunch of files. Sometimes the benefit can be 10x or more. You can prove this yourself by copying 1000 4KB files onto a thumb drive. If you zip them into one file and then copy it, it will copy 5-10 times faster, even if all 1000 files are uncompressible.

The other added benefit is that you also get file compression. That usually doesnt mean much for mp3s and videos though.

There is actually not much benefit at all for imaging media files. Imaging should be used for your OS partition, and your media files should be on a separate partition. To do a full system backup, I clone my OS partition, and then just manually copy/paste my media folders onto the backup drive. Actually I run a script that does this, but all it is doing is copying.

That's what I do with my server OS: image the boot/system "Reserved" and drive volume. If there were more partitions or volumes on the same drive, I configure the server to back up the whole enchilada. But I use a 120GB SSD for the OS/boot disk, and after two years it has less than 60GB used space. It gets image-updated nightly. At the same time, the server images each configured workstation's boot-system disk, or depending on the quantity of user data files on other wkstation drives or volumes, it will back up all of it. The images on the server can be restored bare-metal to a workstation by preparing a 5GB USB flash drive from the server console and using the thumb drive to access the server and restore volumes that can again be selected or excluded.

But the duplication of my "serious" personal and business data in a drivepool assure that I'm allowed one disk to fail while restoring the pool in its entirety. It also must be backed up, even for the redundancy.

But I neither duplicate nor back up a significant percentage of my video capture files, and only back up the remainder as a quarterly file copy and then on an incremental add or update this or that accumulation of files. But these files are huge, so updating a backup will still take longer. But those same files may also be stored on a system that provides some function as media server. And the server backs those up in the background.

The "serious" stuff for my needs must fit on a single hot-swap SATA drive if I have to flee the house for fire or flood. And I'd just as soon want immediate file access even if the OS translates its patent image formats.

 

[grimpr]

For basic file/folder backup to an external USB or USB Dock drive, i use and suggest the best copier for windows imho, fastcopy @ https://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en

it has sync ability, runs from cmd line also and its the fastest and most robust copier i found, copied multiterrabytes with it without problems.

For disk based image backup, Macrium Reflect and Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE are both excellent.

I would stay away from proprietary formats like Crashplan, image based formats like Macrium Reflects are better since they can be converted to common microsoft image formats with ease.

For something more powerful in backup, consider running a file server running Stablebit Drivepool or Unraid, which are both excellent products.

 

[mikeymikec]

Thanks for the reply. However, what benefit does using an image have over having an exact copy of all folders and files as they are on the main drive? The reason I want the files visible is so that I can instantly, with any computer, laptop, etc, plug in the drive and have access to any individual song, or photo without having to load other software.

I use a command line utility that comes with all versions of Windows after XP: robocopy.

It is typically used for mirroring a source folder structure to a destination with a little more intelligence, so that if files exist in the destination that are as up-to-date as the source files, those files don't get re-copied.

the most basic command line example:

robocopy "C:\source folder" "D:\destination folder" /MIR

It's the bread and butter of my backup systems. There are many more command switches, like ignoring NTFS junctions or specific file names or folders, or retrying a file that can't be accessed three times, or waiting x seconds between each retry, log the session to a text file, etc.

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SyncToy - is there a way of restoring backup jobs without having to re-set them up after say a clean install?