What is the best windows backup solution?

Question

After finding this question, What's the best linux backup solution?

I'm wanting to know what the best backup solution for windows is? I have a web application which has a decent amount of content and pages that get updated frequently and I am currently backing it up by hand.

Preferably, I would like to have it backup to a specified FTP on a regular basis.

What is the de-factor solution for this on windows servers?

• Inexpensive or open source
• Has FTP backup ability
• Preferably has MSSQL or MySQL backup capabilities as well

Note: I'm not looking for version control. I'm looking to backup my site in addition to the version control I already have in place. I have a lot of user-generated content and I would simply like to backup the whole site at certain intervals.

Answer 1

Personally, I prefer the excellent Cobian Backup, for the following reasons:

1. It's Freeware
2. It supports Volume Shadow Copy
3. FTP
4. Incremental backups
5. Compression
6. Encryption
7. Scheduling
8. Running commands before and after backups
9. and a whole host of other features.

With #8, you could run a database dump from the command line and have your databases automatically backed up as well.

I'd like to add that with another great freeware - Tunnelier - Cobian can also perform backups over SFTP.

Answer 2

How come your pages are not under source control and your content is not in a (backed-up) database or (backed-up) file system?

Is this a hosted solution? If not, do you not have an IT department? At a minimum, you should be using the Windows Server 2003 built-in backup software.

Answer 3

Acronis True Image

Supports FTP and other options. Compression, virtualization.

Answer 4

I sure like Jungle Disk on windows.

Answer 5

I've found SyncBack by 2BrightSparks to be a good solution for Windows - it's flexible and affordable.

Answer 6

I Like BackupAssist I find it easy to use and very powerful.

Edit:

Use SqlBackupAndFTP for MS SQL Backups, The free version is limited to 2 databases. But the paid version is only $49 and has a couple extra features

Answer 7

There are quite a few alternatives, perhaps one of these will work?

• An online service like Mozy or iDrive. .
• Use cygwin and rsync to make a nice SSH transfer with full synchronization.
• A free and quite powerful program is Cobian Backup.
• A company I worked for used a program called Retrospect. Very powerful and expensive.

Edit: For MySQL backups, check out SqlYog, it has scheduled backup functions for databases. Another solution is to use Cobian or Retrospect and stop the database service so you can make a direct backup of the database (and starting it again automatically, of course). You can do this in cygwin too.

Answer 8

Some recent articles here in the Oz PC Authority magazine might provide some direction. A complete backup strategy here and a review of available online backup options here.

Answer 9

I use robocopy for a number of aspects of my backup, which is a command line tool from Microsoft. It's kind of like a Microsoft answer to rsync; or at least, rsync on a local system without the checksumming. It's also like a really robust version of xcopy. It can do restartable mode, so if it is interrupted it can always start from where it left off, even (in some cases) part way through a large file.

It comes with Vista and above, if you have XP you can get it as a free download as part of Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.

I have batch files which run on schedule to back up things using Robocopy.

I guess it's good if you like to do stuff with batch files etc rather than a GUI app. I'm not saying it's the best solution.

I have also tried Synctool from Microsoft, but it aggravated me. Robocopy's better.

Answer 10

try free Comodo Backup

Has same main features as Cobian Backup but it have one that may be interesting for you

• Synchronized backup - save a file and it gets copied instantly