[Help please] What is a good free, open-source, or low-cost computer backup program?

My hard drive size is roughly 3.5Tb (out of 6Tb total size). It won't get much bigger. I use a 5TB portable hard drive for backups.

I am looking for a file backup program that can backup new or changed files, and won't need to clone the entire hard drive again for each backup, as this process takes hours and hours.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks peeps :marseyblowkiss:

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rsync

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Can also use rsync with btrfs compression if you want backup compression with no need to destroy your rsync workflow with archives

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If you're using btrfs you'd just use snapshots for send and receive. No need for rsync.

Not sure if by compression you mean gzip or something?

Unless you're using a very very small network pipe I wouldn't bother with rsync compression unless you know the files you're sending are compressible - basically text files or documents.


Follower of Christ :marseyandjesus: Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.

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https://www.borgbackup.org

I use this one. It can compress, de-duplicate and encrypt the backups, and only backs up whatever's changed. Works pretty well.

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Thanks. I'll give it a look over.

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Prayer and hopeful thinking is by far the cheapest backup solution

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Tried that, doesn't work :marseyitsover:

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it didnt work for the yes campaign too :marseysmug:

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restic

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Ty :marseyblowkiss:

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How much of that is porn?

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Roughly 15% :marseycoomer2:

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I use macrium reflect. I have a dedicated 4tb backup drive, and macrium allows for scheduling so I can have regular automated backups of lightroom, project files, disk images etc

It's set and forget so pretty good. You can get the full version on torrents if you dont want to pay

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Thanks. I'll see if it works.

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restic

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Just clone :marseyzeldadarklink: your whole drive. It takes less than an hour with a good ssd

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I've been using AOMEI to do just that, and it takes hours and hours.

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What internal and external drives are you using? What USB ports do you have?

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Internal is a HD. External is HD. When I purchased, SSD was (and still is) much more expensive. I am using USB3 ports.

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So buy an internal and external SSD. They're super :marseykangtheconqueror: cheap :marseypiggybank: rn, especially if you can find a used one in good condition

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I'll have a look. But where I am, SSD is roughly double the price of a HD. Brand new of course.

Thanks for your advice, bby.

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Look for Server :marseymaltliquor: SSDs on ebay

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But where I am,

You can just say you're poor btw

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Are you sure the cable is USB3


Follower of Christ :marseyandjesus: Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.

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Are you the alt of that guy who was making AI porn at work?

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Sadly no :marseyitsover:

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>5TB portable hard drive for backups.

dude those things have insane failure rates. :marseyfacepalm:

backups need to be reliable and available and hard to misuse. that's why cloud storage is imho the best option.

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I maintain two backup drives, one offsite, just in case and cycle through them roughly fortnightly.

I only use cloud storage for time-sensitive files. I'm not comfortable with a company snooping through my private files.

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Dropbox and othern cloud storage vendors support client side encryption

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One back up is no back up.

The real strat is getting your computer Ratted each month. That way you have infinite backups free of charge. :marseythumbsup:

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be a no-backup cowboy

yeeeeeehhhhhaaaaaaww...

:npcfront:

i feel nothing

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Veeam community edition is free but can only handle one scheduled task. I wanted to upgrade it but there is NO price listed online and the only way I can find out is through a fcn phone call where I explain my setup to them?? And to find THAT out I had to email them. Neighbors just let me click buttons and give you money wtf are you playing at. It's a symptom of them being for businesses really but I'm trying to give them money and they're really putting roadblocks in my way

So I've been looking at syncback (https://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html) which has a paid version that you buy once and keep for decades until it stops working. Most backup programs are SASS these days so I like that. This one is like rsync and all of the similars, except it seems much less focused on cloud cute twinkry and more useful for externals. There's a free version to try but it (the free version) lacks incremental backup and other things.

However I quite like the idea of torrenting Macrium as mentioned in a comment here because that's free and probably a more polished software

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Isn't Veeam more of a enterprise VM backup solution :marseyconfused:


Follower of Christ :marseyandjesus: Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.

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Probably? But their ‘community edition' thing is pretty simple and feels more like a traditional backup software. They hide it pretty well on their website I think. Or maybe it's because I was searching for its old name ‘Veeam Agent for Windows'

Edit

Here's what's probably the link. Hate their janky-butt website and all their hoops. Hilariously it's actually still listed under the old name but if you contact support about upgrading they deny all knowledge of a product by this name

https://www.veeam.com/downloads.html

(Fukking. Second edit. Click ‘product finder' and then ‘personal use'. It's the top one there)

Note also that they want your email. I used a fake one and then replied to their sales rep from my real one. They never got back to me. Frick you Veeam and your opaque pricing and butthole-scan demanding ways

However the software is good for simple backup jobs on a single machine, like backing up a single hard drive to an always-connected external hard drive. If the external isn't always connected >!(it technically shouldn't be, for backups, though the friction of having to remember to plug it in and run the job might outweigh the benefit of airgapping it)!< then you'd be best off rolling your own script to have it run the backup on connect or on double-clicking an icon

The state of backup software these days. Frick's sake

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Maybe I'm too freetarded but I think using a rsync script would be less of a headache.


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Yeah for sure. Linux has a much less r-slurred situation for backups, lots of free and very tested and highly regarded options. I use windows otherwise I'd be using Borg or rsync.

I do have WSL enabled so maybe this is the way. I wanted a native solution because I get nervous about half-remembered stuff about the line-endings situation and the occasional fragility I get from WSL. But maybe I should just get over it and do a WSL solution

Edit. Oh I see I could just use Git bash for windows. That seems more janky than using WSL somehow but it's probably easier

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I wouldn't be surprised if well known solutions like Borg or Rsync run natively on Windows. I'd assume there's a first class PowerShell solution if not.


Follower of Christ :marseyandjesus: Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.

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You could be right if I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell WSL (or worse, Cygwin) is the closest I can get to that for any well-known Linuks tool. I don't know why it be like that, but it do. Many of the tools say ‘work in progress on Windows version' but for all I know those will never actually appear.

Also I remembered one of the major reasons I didn't want to use WSL. Due to technical limitations such as r-sluration I can't set up actual graphics for WSL, and if I could, the next update to WSL could easily wreck whatever house of cards might uphold such an abomination. So I'd be interacting with backups through CLI only. This probably sounds minor, but as a longtime microsoft victim I want to be able to smash folder icons like the r-slurred squinting gorilla that I am. I don't want to have to nimbly dance around in the command line, avoiding six ways of deleting everything, to copy my file over but find that because I left off a slash it's overwritten the entire destination folder with a single antique meme.

Absolutely a skill issue, but that's where I'm at

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There is a --dry-run flag to test rsync FWIW

Maybe giving something like Ubuntu a spin in a VM would give you a better feel for the system in its native environment?


Follower of Christ :marseyandjesus: Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.

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Yeah I guess I could. I already have Ubuntu set up on WSL and despite what I say I'm fairly familiar with it already, although I lost my original setup from having to reinstall windows. rsync and co are free to try so I should check them out. If it doesn't work out for whatever reason I can go back to microshit ‘throw money at problem' mode. Thanks fren

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https://i.rdrama.net/images/16766675896248007.webp

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Use one drive and sync the files

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Borgbase if you have SSH access or direct access to the backup machine, restic if you have something like a Google bucket with a dumb api

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