Recommend a simple folder backup app?

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Terencek

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For years I have relied on Karen's Replicator, a simple, robust and free tool to backup directories to other drives, but it's now conflicting with other software on my system. Can anyone recommend something similar, and free, for flawless directory backups (but not an application that uses a proprietary backup format -- the backup directories must be straight clones in their original formats). Thanks!
 
Thanks for that. Unfortunately according to the online specs SyncBack doesn't look like what I want, because the free version won't copy open files (unlike Karen's Replicator which really doesn't mind) so that you have to shut everything down (e.g. your e-mail client) before copying -- and it also appears to use a zip format rather than producing a simple identical clone of the folder/s and files which can be used as-is if needed. More suggestions welcome to avoid having to keep downloading and trying freebies, thanks!
 
I have used Cobain backup in the past, and I see many small companies that still do.
There might be newer apps out there now, but Cobain backups is a tried & tested oldie and now has windows 7 support
link: http://www.cobian.se/cobianbackup.htm
 
Terencek said:
Thanks for that. Unfortunately according to the online specs SyncBack doesn't look like what I want, because the free version won't copy open files (unlike Karen's Replicator which really doesn't mind) so that you have to shut everything down (e.g. your e-mail client) before copying -- and it also appears to use a zip format rather than producing a simple identical clone of the folder/s and files which can be used as-is if needed. More suggestions welcome to avoid having to keep downloading and trying freebies, thanks!
Click to expand...

Um, did you try Allway Sync as I suggested above? :confused: what happened with that?
 
Let us know the outcome for the sake of other people reading this post later.
 
Feedback for anyone else with the same requirements:

This turned out to be much more involved than I thought, for such a straightforward task. After downloading and testing the suggested free backup applications, I have to conclude that for my simple purposes, Karen's Replicator is still the best and most flexible. It is also the easiest to use, simply updates the previous backup each time rather than creating a new one or only backing up new or updated files, it deletes obsolete files from the backup, and once configured you can forget about it and just hit the relevant backup job title every so often to keep your files mirrored.

SyncBack apparently wouldn't copy open files, so it was a non-starter.

AllWaySync was too fancy, and seemed more suitable for synchronisation than for mirror backups -- it insisted on synchronising both the target and the destination drives so that old files were copied BACK from the destination as well as new ones being copies FORWARD to the destination. Possibly this could be configured, but it's a little too complex for a novice user who might be working on this computer.

FBackup was too inflexible, choosing and creating its own folders on the destination drive. There also appeared to be no way to specify an updating backup rather than a full one -- though again this might be possible by digging into the configuration, but it's still too fancy for a novice user.

Cobian looked to be the best of the recommended bunch with the most flexibility though novices will be baffled by all the options when first setting up a backup job. What I couldn't get it to do (and the Help file is not onboard, which is always an irritation) was to simply do like Replicator: update changed files in the original mirrored backup and delete files there which have become obsolete. It either wanted to make full fresh backups each time, or it wanted to create fresh directories with just the updated files, leaving obsolete files in the original mirrored backup undeleted and gradually building up to overflowing.

Replicator still wins for my simple purposes -- except that I still have a conflict with Office 2010. The search continues....
 
Terencek said:
AllWaySync was too fancy, and seemed more suitable for synchronisation than for mirror backups -- it insisted on synchronising both the target and the destination drives so that old files were copied BACK from the destination as well as new ones being copies FORWARD to the destination. Possibly this could be configured, but it's a little too complex for a novice user who might be working on this computer.
Click to expand...

Dude, there's a big flipping flashing arrow right in the middle of the program! :D
Just click on it, click the direction you want to sync in... and that's it.
How complex is that? ;)
 
google this,
Super.Flexible.File.Synchronizer.Pro.v5.04.Incl.Keymaker-CORE

it'l get you links to da program ;)
 
I use Safe Data Backup. It's not free, but it was really cheap when I bought it a couple of years ago. It can backup files as they are, or in a .zip archive. It can be set up to run on a schedule -- it uses Windows Task Scheduler, so it's nice and clean. It can backup to DVD, or networked drives -- which is what I use it for.

Edit: It also does revisioning and saves deleted files, if you want it to. So you can recover lost stuff.
 
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