Which Prog To Daily Create Copy Paste Type Mirrors Of Drives ?

Hi,
Windows 7 64bit pro.
C drive SSD. only progs. I use Acronis to clone it.
All my personal data files are on 7200rpm drives and I need a backup prog for these.

I have drives D E F G with drives O P Q R same size to receive their backup files. All internal. DE FG OP QR are the four separate hard drives with partitions.
I want a prog (free or purchased), that is going to see support and development. Just used Cobian but support forum is dead, registration fails, security image says internal error, so no chance of getting any help, he has sold it to someone a few yrs ago.

I need to have the developers behind the product into the future so dont mind paying for it.

I need a copy paste type backup, this must be just as if I had done copy paste. NOT A SINGLE FILE HOLDING ALL MY FILES WITHIN AS AN 'IMAGE' THAT TIES ME TO THE PROGRAM TO UNLOCK IT ! IF THAT PROG GETS DROPPED I AM STUFFED.

As a copy paste type, I want it to be able to function with another same type of backup prog, should the original backup prog becomes undeveloped/supported.

Preferably I want to look at O drive and have it as if I was looking at D drive, to see all my files and folders, not have a folder there and all the files within that folder as Cobian does. they are at least copy paste type as opposed to an 'image' file.

It must initially do a full backup, then spot for deletions, changes and new files and carry out these three on the backup.

Must have deletions reflected in backup, I have video files, they fill up a drive in no time, when I have converted to final mpg, the source I delete , else the drive will be full and not accomodate more files. As such the backup must also MIRROR that as well else there will again be no space for the final edited files !

If I obtain a better picture of something, I deleted the original, so I dont want to see apparent duplicates of the photo in the backup.

I need to run it manually, and just set it to run on D E F G whilst having evening meal etc.

It must carry out a test to check if copy was good.

To have it also run e.g. every hour as an option would be good, and warn of this incase I wish to overide it.

DBenz

 

My setup and requirements are basically the same as yours and I completely agree with you about not using imaging for data backup. I use a sync program, SyncBackFree. AFAIK it is still supported and is running fine on Win 10 systems here, as it always has done previously on earlier versions of Windows. It will keep chosen sets of folders in sync, running to schedules defined by you. It is highly configurable so each backup profile you create can be tailored to your specific needs. Examples are such as what to do when a file exists in the backup but not in the source - am I to copy it back to source or delete it? Every possibility is catered for.

Try it and if you like the basic idea but want more try the pro version or one of the competing sync backup programs available.

 

this is a 2nd vote for syncback, whether free of pro, one can not ask for more from a backup program. also, if you have multiple profiles, all backing up different folders to different destinations, you can run them simultaneously, just highlight them all click run, and away they will go. saves a lot of time. good luck with it.

 

The OP posted the same question 6 months ago and got the same recommendations from the same people. He/she never came back then either.

 

I also created a backup profile for the profile definitions:

 

Hi,
I am revisiting my post as other things took over life, I am now with win10 64bit pro and trying yet again to settle on a prog that will allow me to select a drive letter and not a folder. Thanks for the replies, they mention select a folder.
I need to select drive E as source and drive P as destination for example (I also have D to O, F to Q). I watch a video on SyncBack and the chap is backing up a folder then having to create a folder for it on the destination drive. As at root I have a few hundred folders let alone many files, I see that method as taking forever.
I need to simply select drive E as source and P as destination.
still unsure of what to use.
Does SyncBack Free allow drive letter selection and does it verify (I use Teracopy for copy paste and verify). ?
Does it do append and mirror mode and run when I tell it to at end of day ?
DBenz

 

well, yes and yes and yes.
i just did a test with a copy of syncback that i have, in that i went to create a new backup profile,
during this process, when browsing for the source folder, it allowed me to select just the C: drive
and when browsing for the destination folder, it allowed me to select just the D: drive.
i clicked create profile, and it gave me a summary of selected actions and did not complain about selecting only a drive letter.
you can schedule it to rum whenever you want. i am not sure what you mean by 'append', but the 2 main backup choices
are mirroring source to destination, or keeping both source and destination in sync with each other.
when you first create a backup profile, it offers to do a dry run, it pops up a window showing you the actions it would have taken,
so you can see that it is doing what you intended. good luck with it.

 

Robocopy source destination /switches...
save as a .BAT file and schedule it to run.

Robocopy d: e: /s /XD $RECYCLE.BIN "System Volume Information" /w:1 /r:1
Copies D: to E: with subdirectories, excludes recycle and sys vol, with wait and 1 retry.. might want to add logging.
Works good if it is not the system drive - too many locked files.

Need a GUI - https://robomirror.sourceforge.net/

More:
https://lazyadmin.nl/it/robocopy-ultimate-guide/
https://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

 

Hi, Harmless..thanks for testing.
Drive letter to drive letter...excellent now we all know. Wish their website etc said that.
Q1.Append...means the prog looks for any changes occurring to the nominated source drives and adds or removes the changes to the destination drives, as opposed to copying all of each drive to destination each night. Can it do that ?
Q2.I would have it do the scan analysis at end of day rather than run in the background all day, Can it do that ?
Q3.I am undecided between mirror, which deletes files on both source and destination (backup) drives... and ...keeping destination free from deletes. Should a file go wonky on source I have the destination one to fall back on, so perhaps the second one ? What is that called ?
Q4.Does it do verify when copying files E to P etc ?

Robomirror seems a bit minimal on the GUI and I am uneasy on coded things, . If Syncback can do the things I ask and passes testing then that may be my choice, however I find my notes on testing on a win7 pc and it left 700 folders behind when syncing one drive to another, so I am a little worried now.

DBenz

 

some notes ... syncbackfree is currently at version 11,
i have syncback v7 in a win7 virtual machine.
i did that initial test, 2 replies up, on my mom's win7 computer with syncback v5,
and i use syncback v3 on two backup computers at work because it has an option to use a file copy method that is friendly for netware servers (yes, we still have a netware server at work)
throughout the different versions, the options are always the same, but in different places in the menus, answers below are based on my version 7 of syncback

Q4.Does it do verify when copying files E to P etc ?
yes, under profiles settings - expert - copy/delete - check the box that says verify that the files copied correctly.

Q2.I would have it do the scan analysis at end of day rather than run in the background all day, Can it do that ?
yes, it only does the scan analysis when the backup profile is run, whether the profile is ran manually or scheduled.

Q1.Append...means the prog looks for any changes occurring to the nominated source drives and adds or removes the changes to the destination drives, as opposed to copying all of each drive to destination each night. Can it do that ?
Q3.I am undecided between mirror, which deletes files on both source and destination (backup) drives... and ...keeping destination free from deletes. Should a file go wonky on source I have the destination one to fall back on, so perhaps the second one ? What is that called ?
Q1 & Q3 -> over the years i have noticed that different programs use different terms that mean the same thing. your meaning of append sounds like the meaning of incremental backups, and syncback uses the word 'mirror', so a syncback mirror backup is an incremental backup which is how you defined an appended backup, thus a syncback mirror backup will make all necessary changes to the destination so that the destination looks exactly like the source - in their words, the destination will be a "mirror image" of the source. i prefer this mirror backup because i will often rearrange my source files and folders, and syncback will then make sure that the destination is the same as my source.
when a syncback backup profile is created, you are given 3 options - backup - mirror - synchronize. if i remember correctly, i have never chosen the "backup" profile because it never deletes anything in the destination, which can easily lead to running out of disk space on the destination. the mirror option will only delete files in the destination. the synchronize option will compare the source and the destination, and then copy and delete files in both the source and destination until they are the same. under profile setting -> expert -> decisions-files, there are many different options on how syncback handles both source and destination files, it is actually a rather extensive list of possible actions to take.

as far as wonky files go, the general censuses is: if a file/data is important to you, it needs to live in three different and separate physical locations. the source and 2 backup locations. what i do at my place of work: i have an initial backup computer and 2 small NAS's . daily backups are done to my backup computer and then mirrored to an NAS. the second NAS is physically turned off. i turn it on once a week and mirror the first NAS to the second one, then i turn it off again. if something happens and a file goes wonky (in any sense of the word), all i have to do is turn on that second NAS, copy the file back to the source, and we are good to go. for our very small company, that is my disaster recovery local option, an NAS that has all of the company data on it, but is always turned off, and only turned on once a week, for a few hours, to get anything new that week produced.

i have spent a good part of my life just sitting and watching programs do their thing, that is the only way to truly understand how programs work and function. and i have sat and watched syncback do its thing too many times to count. as syncback is running, it will display what and where it is scanning, and then display the files it is copying, and it all gets recorded in the profile's log file. i prefer the text log file over the default html log file. anyway, good luck with it all!