4 ms·

The standout for me is --delorean which is basically rdiff-backup for windows. There's a wrapper script for it here with some extra options: https://github.com/

The standout for me is --delorean which is basically rdiff-backup for windows. There's a wrapper script for it here with some extra options: https://github.com/International-Nepal-Fellowship/Windows-Tools/tree/master/ntfs-hardlink-backup https://github.com/International-Nepal-Fellowship/Windows-To... Also this page badly needs a ToC.

EvanAnderson 10y ago
rdiff-backup computes reverse diffs between files for multi-generation backup. This looks more like an implementation of rsnapshot, which maintains full copies of old versions of files (rather than reverse diffs). (I run rdiff-backup on Windows and find that it works well.)
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  Ah I'm confusing it with rsnapshot. I'd assumed they were the same. I'm confusing incremental with differential I guess. Are you running rdiff-backup in cygwin? How do you find it deals with the ntfs ACLs? I'm looking for a way to do incremental full-disk backups that leave the files on disk in a "natural" state, with their original pathnames/ACLs/ADSs and not in some weird archive format. Although I suppose rdiff doesn't count as "weird" being as its open source and well supported. TBH I'm quite liking the look of the windows built-in backup function, I like the idea of the shadow copy service and storing disk images as VHLs. Booting into the backups in virtualbox sounds cool. The problem is that the "Previous Versions" get stored on the primary drive, not the backup drive, eating into my free space. Unfortunately one can't set it to use the empty space, it wants to preallocate. You also can't set a time interval, only a percentage of the volume. As far as I can tell consecutive VHL images don't get stored as diffs or anything, they're separate, meaning I'd really only get one at a time. Oh, come back Time Machine, all is forgiven.
  - EvanAnderson 10y ago
    I'm running the 1.3.3 Win32 build (http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup-1.3.3-win32.zip http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backu...). It is supposed to handle NTFS ACLs but I haven't looked at it in-depth because my, for my application, I don't need ACLs to be preserved. I wouldn't think rdiff-backup on Win32 is suitable for an OS backup. I'm backing-up a particular application's directories only, so I can get away with using it. The built-in Windows Backup's image-based backups are reasonable (at least in Windows 7, 8.1, and Server 2008 R2 and 2012/2012 R2-- I haven't tried it with other Windows versions). You get a VHD file (VHDX in Server 2012) that can be mounted, as you say, in Virtualbox, etc. I suppose it would be bootable, but I'd never thought to try that. "Previous Versions" is a user friendly interface to Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) that takes periodic snapshots of a volume and presents them in a GUI. Data for "Previous Versions" is stored in the volume that's subject to snapshot. Windows Backup also uses VSS snapshots to maintain multiple versions of the backup. These snapshots are stored on the backup destination, however. I think you may be conflating the "Previous Versions" feature's use of VSS with Windows Backup's use of VSS. To access the VSS snapshot versions of the VHD(X) file directly that Windows Backup creates it's necessary to expose the shadow copies (using a variety of different methods-- "diskshadow.exe", or "mklink.exe" being the two most common). You can also use the GUI restore interface to restore files from a previous snapshot of the VHD(X) file.
    - JonnieCache 10y ago
      Thanks very much, I spent hours yesterday looking for a specific description of how the VHDs and VSS interacted and couldn't find it. A bit ridiculous really.
- Qantourisc 10y ago
  Word of warning on those backup systems: occasionally run a full-checksum/file-contents sync in case of corruption.

EvanAnderson 10y ago

rdiff-backup computes reverse diffs between files for multi-generation backup. This looks more like an implementation of rsnapshot, which maintains full copies of old versions of files (rather than reverse diffs). (I run rdiff-backup on Windows and find that it works well.)

JonnieCache 10y ago
Ah I'm confusing it with rsnapshot. I'd assumed they were the same. I'm confusing incremental with differential I guess. Are you running rdiff-backup in cygwin? How do you find it deals with the ntfs ACLs? I'm looking for a way to do incremental full-disk backups that leave the files on disk in a "natural" state, with their original pathnames/ACLs/ADSs and not in some weird archive format. Although I suppose rdiff doesn't count as "weird" being as its open source and well supported. TBH I'm quite liking the look of the windows built-in backup function, I like the idea of the shadow copy service and storing disk images as VHLs. Booting into the backups in virtualbox sounds cool. The problem is that the "Previous Versions" get stored on the primary drive, not the backup drive, eating into my free space. Unfortunately one can't set it to use the empty space, it wants to preallocate. You also can't set a time interval, only a percentage of the volume. As far as I can tell consecutive VHL images don't get stored as diffs or anything, they're separate, meaning I'd really only get one at a time. Oh, come back Time Machine, all is forgiven.
- EvanAnderson 10y ago
  I'm running the 1.3.3 Win32 build (http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup-1.3.3-win32.zip http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backu...). It is supposed to handle NTFS ACLs but I haven't looked at it in-depth because my, for my application, I don't need ACLs to be preserved. I wouldn't think rdiff-backup on Win32 is suitable for an OS backup. I'm backing-up a particular application's directories only, so I can get away with using it. The built-in Windows Backup's image-based backups are reasonable (at least in Windows 7, 8.1, and Server 2008 R2 and 2012/2012 R2-- I haven't tried it with other Windows versions). You get a VHD file (VHDX in Server 2012) that can be mounted, as you say, in Virtualbox, etc. I suppose it would be bootable, but I'd never thought to try that. "Previous Versions" is a user friendly interface to Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) that takes periodic snapshots of a volume and presents them in a GUI. Data for "Previous Versions" is stored in the volume that's subject to snapshot. Windows Backup also uses VSS snapshots to maintain multiple versions of the backup. These snapshots are stored on the backup destination, however. I think you may be conflating the "Previous Versions" feature's use of VSS with Windows Backup's use of VSS. To access the VSS snapshot versions of the VHD(X) file directly that Windows Backup creates it's necessary to expose the shadow copies (using a variety of different methods-- "diskshadow.exe", or "mklink.exe" being the two most common). You can also use the GUI restore interface to restore files from a previous snapshot of the VHD(X) file.
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    Thanks very much, I spent hours yesterday looking for a specific description of how the VHDs and VSS interacted and couldn't find it. A bit ridiculous really.
Qantourisc 10y ago
Word of warning on those backup systems: occasionally run a full-checksum/file-contents sync in case of corruption.