Recommend an "incremental" backup software

[Lil'John]

Short: I want to backup my media library to a separate machine and drive. I don't want to do whole file system backup, just backup those files that are different or new.

Longer: About once a week, I want to sync my media machine to my "backup" machine. I will have some high capacity drives available(four 4TB+ drives) to hold the backups. I do not want anything true "cloud" related.

I'm not locked into an OS or software so I'd like recommendations. I won't say no budget

Work uses something called Simplicity. I haven't researched it yet but it seems to do what I'm looking for: backs up selected folders somewhere and ensures changed/new files are updated.

I have no interest in versioning.

I could do something in Python, Visual Studio, etc but I'd rather have something out of the box right now... minimal time available for such design

 

[Mark_Venture]

What OS? If Windows, Microsoft's old Sync Power Toy still works... it can be set to only copy new/changed files (overwriting older with newer)...

 

[XavierMace]

I used to use FreeFileSync for that purpose.

 

[Mr Evil]

There's DirSync Pro. It has a rather ugly interface, but that's not unusual for cross-platform stuff (Windows, Linux and OSX). It's free and open source.

 

[ronbo613]

SyncBack Free

 

[Charlie22911]

I've always used Cobain Backup, it is free and no adware.

 

[thilanliyan]

I use allwaysync.

 

[BFG10K]

OP already has what he needs built into Windows. It's called Robocopy. Run it from the command line:

robocopy Source:\ Dest:\ /mir /fft /xd "$RECYCLE.BIN" "System Volume Information"

Replace "Source" and "Dest" with your drive letters. That'll mirror both based on source's filestamps and it'll exclude system folders you don't need. After the initial backup is done, only changes made to source will propagate to dest, skipping everything else that hasn't changed.

I use this command for my own backups.

 

[Lil'John]

Thanks everyone for the input so far.

My preference for a setup is to have the backup machine pull the data over other machines pushing. But I'm flexible on that.

The backup machine has no OS preference either. But with that said, I have the following machines that may have backups made:

• Media server - unknown OS at this time. Will be a VM on low end server with 24 bays.
• Security camera system - Windows OS of some sort to support Blue Iris Software. Will be a VM on same server as above
• Development server running Windows Server 2012 on high end server(dual v3 xeons) - I want to back up VMs and code

These backup are strictly a "primary machine failure" type backup. The backup machine will be on the same rack as the above machines. If the house catches fire, I'm out of luck

 

[mikeymikec]

OP already has what he needs built into Windows. It's called Robocopy. Run it from the command line:

robocopy Source:\ Dest:\ /mir /fft /xd "$RECYCLE.BIN" "System Volume Information"

Replace "Source" and "Dest" with your drive letters. That'll mirror both based on source's filestamps and it'll exclude system folders you don't need. After the initial backup is done, only changes made to source will propagate to dest, skipping everything else that hasn't changed.

I use this command for my own backups.

Ditto. Btw, does /FFT make it so that backing up onto FAT* volumes doesn't result in time zone weirdness? There's a short explanation in the documentation file I have.

 

[SeanFL]

The tool that I chose to give immediate and full sync between systems is Resillo Sync (formerly BitTorrent Sync).

There's a free version that is quite capable. I bought the full version for some of the options.

https://www.resilio.com/


Mark mentioned SyncToy. I used that tool for many years and it was great. After certain directories had thousands or hundred of thousands of files, it seemed to really slow down SyncToy's ability to keep things going. For that reason I had to give up on it.

 

[grimpr]

My personal favorite programs are Syncovery and Resilio Sync, well worth their money.

 

[celestial crystal]

I think AOMEI Backupper is a nice work!

 

[BFG10K]

Ditto. Btw, does /FFT make it so that backing up onto FAT* volumes doesn't result in time zone weirdness?.

Yes, among other things, like being more robust with the filestamp comparisons with non-NTFS file systems.

 

[FwFred]

I like crashplan--I back up to my NAS. You can also backup (encrypted) to a friend/relatives computer offsite for free. And if you want you can pay them to back up to their cloud, they even have an option to manage the encryption keys locally.

 

[Charlie22911]

I added the SyncThing docker to my unRAID server, which for now backs up to an intel nuc with an 8TB USB3 external drive, I'm running it for a few weeks for now as a test before I ship it to a family member as an offsite backup of important files.
One thing I've noticed with these "constant sync" solutions is increased drive activity as it does a periodic scans for modified files, which can be significant for larger\busy arrays (15 drives in my case) and adversely impact performance; you'll want to pause it for parity checks for sure.

I believe resilio\btsync are very similar, and file versioning for changed\modified files is super handy too if you have the extra space to spare.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This is what I have in a household: three Win 7 -64 systems, one Win 10-64 system, and a WHS-2011 server (waiting for a 2012 R2 replacement). The Win10 system is really a dual-boot W7/W10. I was never successful in getting the server (based on 2008 R2) to back up a Win 10 system. Otherwise, the other systems are always protected by the server nightly backups.

For the server itself, I want periodic backups of files that are much more serious than a collection of DVR'd TV programs and movies. For the household, this is about 500GB in total storage. So I use a single hotswap HDD with SyncBack Free (licensed) for that.

The Win 10 system uses Macrium Reflect for automated daily backups, but I had to buy the license to get incremental backup capability. The free version will do full and differential backups if you can live with that.

 

[Ratman6161]

I like crashplan--I back up to my NAS. You can also backup (encrypted) to a friend/relatives computer offsite for free. And if you want you can pay them to back up to their cloud, they even have an option to manage the encryption keys locally.

I too use crashplan, but its a different animal than the other solutions under discussion since its a paid cloud service. For me its definitely worth the money though. I have a 4TB USB 3.0 drive hooked up to my PC. My PC backs up to crashplan cloud and also to the USB drive. The other computers in my house send data to the USB drive through my PC and also to the cloud. For quick restores I can restore from the USB drive or if the house burns down or somthing or if the USB drive were otherwise lost, I could restore from the cloud. Not free of course but as I mentioned, worth it to me.