Incremental backup and sync software

Question

I need a free software for Windows (with gui or command line) that does incremental backup copying all files and storing changed or deleted files in a directory named like last change date (or a progressive number).

To be more precise:
D:\ is my Data drive
E:\ is my Backupdrive.

If i want to backup all my data from D::
E:\d_lastbackup\ will contain a plain copy of all the files and folder content (no compression or archiving, same files attributes) of D
E:\d_20090822\ will contain all files (with their full path) that are changed or deleted in the last version (since the previous one)
E:\d_20090820\ will contain all files (with their full path) that are changed or deleted in the last version (since the previous one)
and so on...

I had a software working prefectly with an old USB harddsik by Maxtor, but it works only on that device.

Any suggestion?

Answer 1

Cobian backup does separate folders, uncompressed, and supports incremental/differential.

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Answer 2

I use 7-zip for incremental compressed backups.
Here is a reference article: Powershell & 7Zip incremental backup solution.
That link has a ready-script for use.
_{But, you don't really need PowerShell -- the ability comes from 7z itself.}

Answer 3

DeltaCopy (basically a Windows version of rsync) and SyncBack (3 versions to choose from, one free) sound right up your alley.

Answer 4

I use rdiff-backup with some scripting I found on the 'net that adds VSS capability. Each prior version is stored compressed as a difference to the newer version. This allows backups with minimal storage, restores from newest version are fastest and I can delete very old backups without messing up newer version.

Answer 5

If you get Robocpy and the Robocopy GUI you can fiddle with it to do what you want. I use this everyday for my backups.

Answer 6

Crashplan from here http://www4.crashplan.com/landing/index.html gives some nice options. I'm not sure if it will back up to another internal drive but I can't see why it wouldn't.

Answer 7

Some backup devices (such as the Seagate Freeagent external drive) come with supplied backup software. However, I find to cover from building fire, it can be better to use a remote backup system such Squirrelsave, Mozy, Carbonite or Jungledisk. If you have a home network and want a machine to work as a backup machine, then R1Soft's CDP backup system supports Windows and Linux machines.

However, all these options are commercial - but how valuable is your data?

Answer 8

I wrote my own, as a Python script. It uses md5sum to detect changed files, and copies them to a standard backup subdirectory within each working directory. Each backed up file has the same file name, with a suffix, such as <filename>_1, <filename>_2, etc...

This was easier when I used VMS, which made backup versions of changed files automatically.