A decent free backup software

[mistermack]

I'm looking for a backup program to use on a home pc. Preferably free. 

I downloaded EaseUS Todo Backup Free yesterday, but was disappointed as it seems to only work on whole drives. I want something that will work on individual folders, and just back up the changes from the last time the folder was updated. 

I don't want to back up a whole drive again, just to apply the most recent changes. I seem to remember seeing that kind of thing advertised, but I don't know by who or where. 

[StringJunky]

Have a lool at Macrium Reflect Free: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree?mo

[mistermack]

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Have a lool at Macrium

Thanks SJ

I've had a look, I have a few suggestions now, so I'll have to try out what looks nearest to what I want. 

My computer gave me a warning about my second hard drive in my pc. It's not failed as yet. I have about 1.5 TB of tv recorded video on it, so I don't want to lose it, but it's not giving any trouble at the moment. 

I'd like to have a system of keeping most of my valued files on an external disk, and be able to just update it once a week, or something like that, so that the disk isn't wearing out, being on all the time as a second internal disk. 

[Sensei]

Configure RAID in mirror mode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

 

[mistermack]

An update on my pc problems.  I started to get other problems, following on from the hard disk failure messages. Eventually, the computer refused to reboot, with or without the suspect secondary hard disk. In the end I had to wipe the OS and re-install. And problems persisted, without the secondary hard disk, so that certainly seems to have been a false message, caused by other problems. 

I now run my laptop through my big monitor, and no problems at all, even with the original secondary hard disk connected, so that was not guilty. 

I suspect that my desktop has a hardware fault, but it's hard to nail down. I've reinstalled the OS and it works fine for a while, then refuses to reboot. I suspect maybe the power supply, USB connections or graphics card, but it's still hard to nail it down. 

It might even be something malicious in the graphics drivers. I use IOBIT driver-booster to install the drivers when re-installing, and the pc refused to reboot after I downloaded the latest driver fro the graphics card. Driver booster has always been ultra-reliable for me in the past, so I'm loathe to put the blame there. 

I'm reinstalling the operating system on a fresh hard disk, without updating the graphics drivers, and so far, it's not given any trouble at all, which seems to suggest that the power supply etc. are all ok. 

Hey ho, the computer has been in use constantly and given no trouble for six years, so it's entitled to dish out a little bit of grief. 

I will be selecting a backup system in the future though. You don't realise just what losing your data would mean, till you are faced with the imminent prospect. 

Edited January 4, 2022 by mistermack

[Sensei]

Disk failure (especially HDD which takes more energy than SSD) can be a sign of cable problems or PSU problems..

1) replace SATA cables.

2) replace PSU.

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

I suspect maybe the power supply,

Measure the voltages on the power supply. Without a heavy load and with a heavy load.

ps. All my problems with PC for the last year were caused by the PSU giving too low a voltage at random times. Periodic heavy use of the CPU/GPU, plugging in DVD drives and several drives caused them to occur faster. PSU does not have to be permanently damaged. It just can give you 4.5V instead of 5V and 11V or 13V instead of 12V. When there is heavy HDD usage, HDD is shutting down, and cannot start spinning again, until reboot. Data on NTFS is lost and logical errors start appearing on volumes. And OS becomes unstable.

[mistermack]

8 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Measure the voltages on the power supply. Without a heavy load and with a heavy load.

Thanks. I did measure the voltages and they were ok. But I didn't measure them under heavy load. The problem only showed itself on rebooting, and I guess that would be a period of heavy load, so I'll check out the voltages as it starts up. 

I have my doubts now though, because the pc has been running perfectly for a couple of days, booting properly over and over, and if it was the power supply, I would have expected it to give problems by now. The only difference this time is that I haven't updated the graphics driver so I'm leaning towards that as the problem. Maybe the card has developed a fault, that only shows itself with the updated drivers installed. 

I'll give it a bit longer to see if the problem re-appears without the graphics being updated. Or I could take the card out, and try using vga connection on the motherboard to connect the monitor.

I can usually sort out pc problems pretty rapidly, but this one is the exception.

[mistermack]

That PC failed completely. Won't boot or even re-install. Must be a motherboard or chip fault. It's rare, but it does happen. 

I've bought another, I'm just waiting for it to come. I will be using a backup progam on it though, because it's coming with a fresh licensed install of windows ten, but I don't think it will include the windows disk, so I'm going to create a system image as soon as I get it. I want to change the hard drive to SSD, so I should be able to duplicate the current OS onto it with an image. 

[StringJunky]

9 minutes ago, mistermack said:

That PC failed completely. Won't boot or even re-install. Must be a motherboard or chip fault. It's rare, but it does happen. 

I've bought another, I'm just waiting for it to come. I will be using a backup progam on it though, because it's coming with a fresh licensed install of windows ten, but I don't think it will include the windows disk, so I'm going to create a system image as soon as I get it. I want to change the hard drive to SSD, so I should be able to duplicate the current OS onto it with an image. 

You can get the OS off the MS site when you need it. The license no. is embedded in the pc and will be read during installation.

[mistermack]

Thanks, I didn't know that. I used to have a little program that can extract the licence number from an operating system, but I never actually used it. 

I use windows 8.1 and I like it, so I'll have to make my mind up when it arrives, whether to change or just install 8.1 on it.

[Sensei]

9 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

The license no. is embedded in the pc and will be read during installation.

Aren't you talking about laptops that have the OS preinstalled by default?

https://www.google.com/search?q=read+license+key+from+laptop+motherboard

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Sensei

[studiot]

I haven't used it for a while but Redo-Backup is free (open source project) and works really well.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/redobackup/

 

You make a byte by byte copy of the entire or part of the hard drive or chosen partition onto other media such as DVD/USBstick/Hard drive (spare) etc.

Then the backup software copies the other way when needed and handles wiping and repartitioning you hard drive automatically.

 

Unfortunately it won't do servers.

 

[StringJunky]

20 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Aren't you talking about laptops that have the OS preinstalled by default?

https://www.google.com/search?q=read+license+key+from+laptop+motherboard

 

Yes, it's in the BIOS.

Edited January 7, 2022 by StringJunky

[Sensei]

@StringJunky

The keyword here are "laptop", "preinstalled OS"/"OEM OS"..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_equipment_manufacturer

 All of the laptops I bought came with Windows OEM pre-installed. The older ones came with a label on the back with a license key. The newer ones have it encoded into the hardware.

 All of the desktop computers (x86, Macs excluded) that I bought did not have an operating system pre-installed. They were simply separate pieces of hardware...

Edited January 8, 2022 by Sensei

[mistermack]

18 hours ago, studiot said:

Redo-Backup is free (open source project) and works really well.

Thanks, I'll check that out. I haven't used a backup program for a long time, but I can remember doing a system backup from one disk, and restoring it with one click to another. So much easier, if you want to change the hard disk. 

 

13 minutes ago, Sensei said:

The newer ones have it encoded into the hardware.

I think that that is on a rescue partition on the hard disk. If so, that wouldn't help you if your hard disk failed, or if, like me, you wanted to re-install on a SSD to up the boot speed etc. 

The older ones do have the key on a sticker, but you need the original install disk to use it. It could be of use if you are buying an upgrade though, I guess. 

[mistermack]

Just to update this thread : 

I looked at the free offerings  for a backup software, and ended up using Macrium Reflect, which is available as a free download. As usual, you get more with the paid version, but the free version is I think as good as it gets. There are no nasty surprises, it does what it says on the tin. 

I particularly like it because it will clone a disk, I bought a pc with Windows 10 installed on a 2TB hard disk, and wanted to clone that to an SSD, which makes it all so much faster. It did that, no problem, and the SSD booted up and ran just like the original 2TB hard disk. You can also create an image, to save and use later. And you can do an incremental backup, but I haven't tried that yet. 

The reports on Macrium were very good, and using it, I have to agree, and recommend it.  

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Just to update this thread : 

I looked at the free offerings  for a backup software, and ended up using Macrium Reflect, which is available as a free download. As usual, you get more with the paid version, but the free version is I think as good as it gets. There are no nasty surprises, it does what it says on the tin. 

I particularly like it because it will clone a disk, I bought a pc with Windows 10 installed on a 2TB hard disk, and wanted to clone that to an SSD, which makes it all so much faster. It did that, no problem, and the SSD booted up and ran just like the original 2TB hard disk. You can also create an image, to save and use later. And you can do an incremental backup, but I haven't tried that yet. 

The reports on Macrium were very good, and using it, I have to agree, and recommend it.  

Ive used it since about 2005. Extremely reliable.

[Sensei]

On 1/7/2022 at 6:29 PM, studiot said:

Unfortunately it won't do servers.

 Server administrators have a built-in "dd" command...

e.g.

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda bs=64M will wipe the entire HDD/SSD

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=64M will copy the entire HDD/SSD to a 2nd HDD/SSD

dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/root/pendrive/file.img bs=64M will copy entire HDD/SSD to a pendrive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

You can backup, wipe out or restore MBR/GPT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)#Master_boot_record_backup_and_restore

(Or check if the MBR/GPT has been modified by a hacker. Create a script that reads the MBR/GPT, calculate the hash and compare it to the previous version, possibly sends it to the other machine.... and alert you if it has changed)

It works on Windows data. Just download Linux live DVD, Rufus create bootable pendrive, and you can make a backup of Windows data as well.

Edited February 7, 2022 by Sensei

[studiot]

13 hours ago, Sensei said:

Server administrators have a built-in "dd" command...

Thanks.  +1

Edited February 7, 2022 by studiot

[gulshan212]

Well, to create a digital copy of the electronic files, folders, and drives, backup software is used. Backup data can be saved locally on hard drives or online on remote servers. IBackup is best and free option for taking backup for files and other data. You must try it.