The ideal background filesystem backup

Question

I am thinking about a script/program that can run in background, and attempt to backup or synchronize a given filesystem path to a mirror location (probably located on an external/separate storage device).

This should apply to Windows but it could as well be used under Linux.

• Differential/incremental backups are a bonus.
• Windows System State backups are a bonus too.
• Keeping the origin free of meta-data is essential. (unlike version control)
• Searching by file or activity date could be interesting (like version control)
• Backup repositories should be easy to browse and take little space.
• Deleted files should be available for recovery for a period of time.
• Windows Backup is tedious and bloated and limited.
• Tar-gzipping is not accessible.
• User interaction during backup should be nonexistent.

Answer 1

Check out AJCBackup. Does an excellent job at a good price.

Answer 2

Duplicity is free and creates encrypted, incremental, compressed offsite backups. It's a linux app, but you could run it in cygwin or a small virtual machine.

I've written a perl script that runs it via a cronjob to backup several very big directories over DSL and it works great.

Answer 3

Acronis True Image is great. It's not free but the Home edition is pretty cheap for what it does and it works reliably. Does image- and file- based backups, scheduling, instant backup of chosen folders accessible from explorer context menu, incremental/differential backups, can mount the backup files as Windows volumes and browse them, copy files out etc. It has saved my ass a few times already.

Answer 4

Amanda is the ultimate full-featured open-source backup solution, and there's a (relatively) new Zmanda Windows Client.