Good freeware backup software?

rhysadams

Microsoft SyncToy is pretty good for Windows

bod1467

Already mentioned in this thread, along with the issues with Windows 10.

chunter

Old faithful - Synchbackfree
http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html
Someone recommended it here years ago and I've been using it since.

And as mentioned, don't keep your external backup drive plugged in all the time - it makes your backups almost pointless.

spud17

chunter wrote: »

Old faithful - Synchbackfree
http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html
Someone recommended it here years ago and I've been using it since.

And as mentioned, don't keep your external backup drive plugged in all the time - it makes your backups almost pointless.

My number 1 choice.
I run multiple profiles, some scheduled, some manual, also profiles within profiles, it's never faltered.
If there has ever been a problem, it's always been something I've altered.

Joy_Burke

Check this article.

Best free PC backup software

JohnB47

Just thought I'd mention that I downloaded and used Freefilesync yesterday - seems pretty easy to use and does what I want.

One odd thing, it spent loads of time backing up my Documents and Pictures, removing each existing one from the portable hard drive before replacing it with the one from the laptop. As well as copying new ones across of course.

I thought that, as the files were originally on an old laptop and I'd used the same portable hard drive to copy them to the new laptop a few months ago, it would simply copy the new files I'd created on the new laptop.

Maybe the files were given some sort of new date info when they were copied in to the new laptop and Freefilesync saw this and assumed that they were all new files? The files still have their old created/modified dates on them.

I then modified one file on the laptop and ran the sync again and just this one file was copied across.

So it seems to have done exactly what I wanted - just took three hours doing it the first time.

Cheers all.

esuhl

JohnB47 wrote: »

One odd thing, it spent loads of time backing up my Documents and Pictures, removing each existing one from the portable hard drive before replacing it with the one from the laptop. As well as copying new ones across of course.

I thought that, as the files were originally on an old laptop and I'd used the same portable hard drive to copy them to the new laptop a few months ago, it would simply copy the new files I'd created on the new laptop.

Maybe the files were given some sort of new date info when they were copied in to the new laptop and Freefilesync saw this and assumed that they were all new files? The files still have their old created/modified dates on them.

Ah -- I think that's something to do with the type of filesystem on the partitions, and daylight saving time. When the clocks go back/forwards, in certain conditions, the time-stamps on the file will be out by exactly one hour.

You can fix this by hitting F6 (to go into the Comparison settings), and then typing the digit "1" (i.e. one hour) into the box labelled "Ignore time shift [hh:mm]".

Just under the box, there's a link marked "Handle daylight saving time", which gives you full details of how daylight saving changes are handled on different filesystems.

JohnB47

Excellent, thanks. I've just done that.