8 ms·

Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Fast File Replicator for Windows

154 points by apankrat 7y ago

This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years. Link: https://bvckup2.com https://bvckup2.com I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons. 1. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it. Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things. It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too. Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1]. 2. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it. That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there. -- By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it. Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well. -- [1] https://bvckup2.com/wip https://bvckup2.com/wip

tabulatouch 7y ago
Hi there, you have my upvote. I have been trying many solutions for a fast deltacopy-based file replication, and yours is really the best. I am a solopreneur too, living on my product in the last 9 years, somehow i "sensed" this little software gem was the child of a similar mind ;) All the best!
- apankrat 7y ago
  Cheers, thanks!
- lukevp 7y ago
  What is your product, if you don't mind? I'm always eager to hear stories of entrepreneurs that aren't after VC funding or fast growth and are more about the freedom of having your own business and product.
yodon 7y ago
Does the website say whether it can be used for backup to S3/Azure/GCP/etc? I looked and couldn't find either yes or no.
- apankrat 7y ago
  Bvckup 2 operates at the file system level. It has no API-level integration with cloud storage providers. It can be used to backup onto any virtual drives emulated by the cloud client software, which is, obviously, not the same thing, but a workaround. Direct cloud storage integration is on the dev plan, and it's possible it'll be a separate (sister) product.
  - yodon 7y ago
    Separate product seems like it makes a lot of sense. I suspect for most it is an either/or situation and you could keep each tool's user cognitive complexity lower by shedding the unused stuff from the other destination configuration.
yboris 7y ago
I've been a huge fan of the UI design of bvckup for years -- the attention to detail is heartwarming.
- apankrat 7y ago
  Thanks. Little OCD goes a long way.
apankrat 7y ago
This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years. I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons. 1. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it. Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things. It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too. Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1]. 2. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it. That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there. -- By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it. Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well. -- [1] https://bvckup2.com/wip https://bvckup2.com/wip
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  So what language is the UI coded in? What external dependencies are you using? It looks nice and straight forward, so I give you your props for that.
  - apankrat 7y ago
    The whole thing is in C++, but more in C-with-classes style. Very little of meta programming outside of STL, flat class hierarchy, etc. In terms of dependencies - just the Windows API and a bit of Native API, if available. No WMI, very little of COM (for shell and shadow copying). It does however use quite a few exotics from the Windows API, e.g. SetFileIoOverlappedRange, SetFileCompletionNotificationModes, etc.
dang 7y ago
Original Show HN from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405
beart 7y ago
Not sure why but your domain is being blocked by one of the default pihole lists.
- apankrat 7y ago
  Lovely. Do you have any details?
  - beart 7y ago
    Sorry, not a default list. However, it looks like it's in this list which has not been updated for some time. This list blocks websites that use canvas fingerprinting. https://gist.github.com/CHEF-KOCH/2dea75d43b2184f228ae94b168d275b1 https://gist.github.com/CHEF-KOCH/2dea75d43b2184f228ae94b168...
    - apankrat 7y ago
      Ah, OK. There were some issues with fraud back then, so had to resort to using cookies that were initialized client-side.
    - unreal37 7y ago
      Sounds like you need to change list providers...
- Inversechi 7y ago
  What lists are you subscribed to? Pi-Hole user here and it's working just fine for me.
mehrdadn 7y ago
Does the tool replicate NTFS extended attributes, reparse points, short file names, hardlinks, timestamps, and other metadata I can't think of at the moment correctly?
- apankrat 7y ago
  It replicates timestamps, attributes, DACL, SACL, group and owner info, as well as alternate file streams. Replication of some of these is off by default though. It can follow symlinks, reparse and mount points, but doesn't replicate them. It does not know about hardlinks.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    I see. Note that normal file attributes != extended attributes. Which one are you referring to? (For symlinks/reparse points, you'd probably have to provide an option on how to replicate them, since there isn't one clear solution. But it's not impossible to do something sane either. Link Shell Extension may have inspiration on various methods you could use.)
    - apankrat 7y ago
      Regular attributes. Extended attributes have been deprecated by Microsoft quite some time ago in favour of ADS. It's not hard to add support for replicating them, but there's literally no demand for that.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        Not sure where you got that idea (link?) but EAs are used in WSL, among other things. Meaning you won't be able to copy WSL file systems properly right now. As a general rule, you should avoid any information loss regardless of anyone's opinion on the matter. No one is going to think "ah well, Microsoft/etc. doesn't like this feature so it's ok my backup is messed up".
        7y ago
boromi 7y ago
How does this integrate with a synology nas ? I've been thinking about picking up a synology nas.
- chosenken 7y ago
  I have been using Bvckup 2 to backup primarily to my Synology Nas. It correctly identifies that the destination directory is a SAMBA v3.1 mount, and treats it as NTFS. I actually love using it for my Synology as it has the ability to do Delta Copying. Some of my folders contain VM's and VeraCrypt drives, and it is very fast when it comes to sending delta copies. It still has to read the file on the destination to determine what to write, but that only becomes apparent on large files. I think you may lose some features since it is a mounted network drive(mainly limitations to SAMBA), but I have had no issues with it. Scanning remote files is fast, if the contents or timestamps haven't changed I've seen it scan over 600K files in a couple of minuets (duplicacy backup, in the process of moving to a new hard drive and need to store it temporarily on the Nas).
  - apankrat 7y ago
    I've been playing with doing file change detection based on NTFS journals. There are some caveats, but it looks very promising. It's O(1) basically instead of O(file-size).
- apankrat 7y ago
  It works really well with Synology boxes. It also has quite a few Synology-specific tweaks, including support for their weird quirk of rounding up file timestamps to the nearest second and then subtracting a millisecond from it.
thrownaway954 7y ago
"If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them." Do you have any comparisons and/or benchmarks. Doing the quick 10 second scan of your site doesn't list any. So how do I know this is worth $30 for personal use and a whopping $150 for servers when robocopy does just fine and is free for both?
- apankrat 7y ago
  Fair point. Benchmarks are in the pipeline, will be adding them soon. Re: how do you know - there's a 2 week trial just for that.
mruszczyk 7y ago
I'm trying to wrap my head around the use case here. I love to support well crafted native software so don't take this as a negative question. I often use a tool such as Arq or Veeam to create snapshots in time of a folder or set of folders that then get uploaded to a remote storage location or repository, to recover files or documents from that time. I also use cloud storage providers to keep a copy of data that I am working on in sync between devices. I can't seem to tell but this product seems to be missing any additional features to really fill a role that I lack. It doesn't appear to make incremental copies of the data set to allow me to roll back in time, it does track deleted items but interim changes are not kept or tracked, so it's really just a capture of the state of the folder at last run time. It's compared to robocopy but the tool assumes an empty initial destination directory, there's no facility for copying data into a directory with content in it already, so it's can't be used as a general file transfer tool. It seems the best use case is for say transferring a directory of tarball dumps to a remote location over SMB?
ryanoshea 7y ago
I've used Bvckup 2 for years and found it the most reliable solution for PC-driven backup and replication jobs on Windows. It has a few high-level feature limitations that have bugged me (splitting a large folder backup across multiple smaller drives, for example), but it nails the core competencies better than anything else I've used.
- apankrat 7y ago
  Re: splitting a backup across several drives - this has unique UI requirements that aren't compatible with bvckup2's core Engine/UI model. The engine runs all backups autonomously and the UI merely shows the progress. Conversely, split backups are interactive - eject A, insert B, etc.
  - ryanoshea 7y ago
    Sure, though my use case would look more like treating multiple destination devices as one logical AND, and running the backup only when all are present. I wouldn't need any guarantees w/r/t which files land on which device or the order they're written to, only that if sum(destination device storage) > size of folder to be backed up, everything from the folder makes it onto one of the devices.
    - apankrat 7y ago
      OK, I see. That's a good case, let me think about it.
agumonkey 7y ago
The website and application layout gives a sense of ultra high grade solidity. The swiss flag doesn't seems out of place here.
AnonC 7y ago
I tried bvckup2 maybe a year or two ago. But I stopped using it because of a couple of license issues (?). The thing is, my work machine is Windows but my employer doesn't have a good backup solution (other than OneDrive, which I don't like much because of its speed and restrictions). I wasn't sure if I could buy a personal license and use it to backup my work machine at my own cost, since said employer wouldn't pay for this or reimburse the cost. The personal license terms sounds strict to prohibit such use. I'm not sure if that's what was meant though. The new licensing model since June seems to address this, with no distinction on the kind of use. But the second issue was the cost of the license itself. It just is high for me (due to currency and other issues), and I couldn't find any discount codes either. Now I see that the prices seem to have increased further since June 2019 (so it's beyond my reach). I don't recall the feature set of the personal license from before, but the new Basic version seems pretty basic, and seems to have too many differences with the Pro Workstation version. Narrowing that gap could make for better tiers, IMO.
- apankrat 7y ago
  You are correct that you would've needed an Professional license for your case. Personal licenses were basically a 50% discounted option for backing up one's photos and music stash. Re: pricing - it is what it is, sorry. We are trying to move towards pro IT use and the pricing reflects that. Basic license is not really meant for home use, but rather for certain very specific replication scenarios. In fact, I am considering removing it altogether, because it only serves to confuse simpler (read, non-IT) home users into thinking that it's meant for them, while it _is_ quite restricted.
justsomeguy3591 7y ago
I used this back when I was on Windows - an absolute delight to use. As a developer I hope to someday create something as useful and well-designed as this tool!
- apankrat 7y ago
  Thanks, it's a very nice compliment.
nanobyte109 7y ago
Free alternative freefilesync.org
Xamayon 7y ago
Does this support backing up many TB many million file data sets to multiple smaller target disks? I've been looking for a utility which can handle filling a disk with as many complete files as possible, then allowing a new disk to be inserted to continue. This used to work great with tape utilities, but every hdd based copy/backup utility I've tried assumes your backups will always fit on a single target disk. Most also fail miserably after a few hundred thousand files, so it's nice to see this one supports millions sanely.
- apankrat 7y ago
  No, it doesn't support this type of usage. It's a very niche scenario and there are some hairy usability issues with it, especially post-backup.
  - Xamayon 7y ago
    That's too bad, the site got my hopes up when I saw the 'unlimited size' capability. It's really limited by the size of the target. If you have any desire to support this kind of usage, I for one don't actually care what happens after the backup. It would not be an updated backup, just a copy the files to a set of disks fresh every so often. In addition to the target not being a limiting factor size wise, using independently mountable non-spanned/raided/etc disks can simplify recovery and improve recoverability of files long term. Even if a few disks fail in storage, the files on the others are perfectly accessible without special software or hardware, and if multiple backup disk sets exist, the total number of files lost would likely be very low.
    - apankrat 7y ago
      So I've been thinking about this scenario. Tell me this - say you have a mix of files of different sizes. Would you expect the program to try and pack as much files onto each drive (to maximize per-disk use) or copying files in order and switching disks when the next file doesn't fit is OK? If it's the latter, I think I might be able to cook up something command-line for this sort of case. This is still a very niche scenario, but you aren't the first one to ask about it.
rkagerer 7y ago
1MB executable and a short, simple EULA. Wish more software came like that. Given the lack of dependencies, have you considered offering an installer-free download? (The way Mark Russinovich does with SysInternals or Nir Sofer does with NirSoft tools?)
- apankrat 7y ago
  I have, but never got around to doing it. All other utilities (Diskovery, CCSIOBench, etc.) are like that though already.
mogpt 7y ago
I’ve been very happily using Bvckup for my personal and work files for a number of years now. Thanks very much for your pristine work.
- apankrat 7y ago
  Glad you like it :)
markwakeford 7y ago
Hello old friend :), wheres the DMG download ?? :P
- apankrat 7y ago
  Once Jobs is back and Macs are put back in order.
clausok 7y ago
I really like your landing page. FYI: on the feature comparison page, when you expand a row with the '+', the 'More on this...' links are not working yet.
- apankrat 7y ago
  Thanks for the FYI, should be working as expected now.
unreal37 7y ago
Congratulations! I bought this in 2015 and happy to see the license is still valid!
b3lvedere 7y ago
"Support for SAMBA quirks" As someone who has worked with a lot of NAS products, i can relate to this a lot.
farmerbb 7y ago
Was just wishing I had a tool like this tonight. Thanks for sharing.
bmh 7y ago
Any chance you'd be willing to share some revenue numbers?
- apankrat 7y ago
  No, sorry.
kuroguro 7y ago
Love the UI. Did you use some off the shelf UI library or is that custom?
- apankrat 7y ago
  Thanks, it's custom. It's simpler than it looks. Except for fade-in/out transitions. It's absolutely ridiculous how much effort it takes to make them flicker-free.
kup0 7y ago
I love the focus on the UI/UX and performance. Looks like a solid, highly-efficient application, something that is sorely missing (or at least hard to find) on Windows
dmitripopov 7y ago
Hello from a fellow Windows mISV! I'd like to say that there are only two of us remaining, but RSDN forum "Shareware and business" is still alive and kicking.
- apankrat 7y ago
  There are quite a few small ISVs out there. From the top of my head and in areas related to my own - Arq backup, SoftPerfect, Syncovery. I don't think Macrium and Glasswire are terribly big either. Ditto for 2BrightSparks. HexRays. Boatload of smaller shops in the 3D tools/plugins domain. Lots and lots of examples, they are just hard to notice because they look and feel bigger than they actually are.
hollerith 7y ago
Huh. Why "Bvckup" and not "Backvp"?
- apankrat 7y ago
  It's an upside down A... or at least that was the idea, which frankly wasn't the very best one. I still wonder how many sales we routinely lose because of the name.
AuCalc 7y ago
What you think about aucalc.com?

154 points by apankrat 7y ago

tabulatouch 7y ago

Hi there, you have my upvote. I have been trying many solutions for a fast deltacopy-based file replication, and yours is really the best. I am a solopreneur too, living on my product in the last 9 years, somehow i "sensed" this little software gem was the child of a similar mind ;) All the best!

apankrat 7y ago
Cheers, thanks!
lukevp 7y ago
What is your product, if you don't mind? I'm always eager to hear stories of entrepreneurs that aren't after VC funding or fast growth and are more about the freedom of having your own business and product.

yodon 7y ago

Does the website say whether it can be used for backup to S3/Azure/GCP/etc? I looked and couldn't find either yes or no.

apankrat 7y ago
Bvckup 2 operates at the file system level. It has no API-level integration with cloud storage providers. It can be used to backup onto any virtual drives emulated by the cloud client software, which is, obviously, not the same thing, but a workaround. Direct cloud storage integration is on the dev plan, and it's possible it'll be a separate (sister) product.
- yodon 7y ago
  Separate product seems like it makes a lot of sense. I suspect for most it is an either/or situation and you could keep each tool's user cognitive complexity lower by shedding the unused stuff from the other destination configuration.

yboris 7y ago

I've been a huge fan of the UI design of bvckup for years -- the attention to detail is heartwarming.

apankrat 7y ago
Thanks. Little OCD goes a long way.

apankrat 7y ago

This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years. I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons. 1. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it. Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things. It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too. Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1]. 2. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it. That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there. -- By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it. Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well. -- [1] https://bvckup2.com/wip https://bvckup2.com/wip

giancarlostoro 7y ago
So what language is the UI coded in? What external dependencies are you using? It looks nice and straight forward, so I give you your props for that.
- apankrat 7y ago
  The whole thing is in C++, but more in C-with-classes style. Very little of meta programming outside of STL, flat class hierarchy, etc. In terms of dependencies - just the Windows API and a bit of Native API, if available. No WMI, very little of COM (for shell and shadow copying). It does however use quite a few exotics from the Windows API, e.g. SetFileIoOverlappedRange, SetFileCompletionNotificationModes, etc.

dang 7y ago

Original Show HN from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405

beart 7y ago

Not sure why but your domain is being blocked by one of the default pihole lists.

apankrat 7y ago
Lovely. Do you have any details?
- beart 7y ago
  Sorry, not a default list. However, it looks like it's in this list which has not been updated for some time. This list blocks websites that use canvas fingerprinting. https://gist.github.com/CHEF-KOCH/2dea75d43b2184f228ae94b168d275b1 https://gist.github.com/CHEF-KOCH/2dea75d43b2184f228ae94b168...
  - apankrat 7y ago
    Ah, OK. There were some issues with fraud back then, so had to resort to using cookies that were initialized client-side.
  - unreal37 7y ago
    Sounds like you need to change list providers...
Inversechi 7y ago
What lists are you subscribed to? Pi-Hole user here and it's working just fine for me.

mehrdadn 7y ago

Does the tool replicate NTFS extended attributes, reparse points, short file names, hardlinks, timestamps, and other metadata I can't think of at the moment correctly?

apankrat 7y ago
It replicates timestamps, attributes, DACL, SACL, group and owner info, as well as alternate file streams. Replication of some of these is off by default though. It can follow symlinks, reparse and mount points, but doesn't replicate them. It does not know about hardlinks.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  I see. Note that normal file attributes != extended attributes. Which one are you referring to? (For symlinks/reparse points, you'd probably have to provide an option on how to replicate them, since there isn't one clear solution. But it's not impossible to do something sane either. Link Shell Extension may have inspiration on various methods you could use.)
  - apankrat 7y ago
    Regular attributes. Extended attributes have been deprecated by Microsoft quite some time ago in favour of ADS. It's not hard to add support for replicating them, but there's literally no demand for that.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Not sure where you got that idea (link?) but EAs are used in WSL, among other things. Meaning you won't be able to copy WSL file systems properly right now. As a general rule, you should avoid any information loss regardless of anyone's opinion on the matter. No one is going to think "ah well, Microsoft/etc. doesn't like this feature so it's ok my backup is messed up".
      - 7y ago

boromi 7y ago

How does this integrate with a synology nas ? I've been thinking about picking up a synology nas.

chosenken 7y ago
I have been using Bvckup 2 to backup primarily to my Synology Nas. It correctly identifies that the destination directory is a SAMBA v3.1 mount, and treats it as NTFS. I actually love using it for my Synology as it has the ability to do Delta Copying. Some of my folders contain VM's and VeraCrypt drives, and it is very fast when it comes to sending delta copies. It still has to read the file on the destination to determine what to write, but that only becomes apparent on large files. I think you may lose some features since it is a mounted network drive(mainly limitations to SAMBA), but I have had no issues with it. Scanning remote files is fast, if the contents or timestamps haven't changed I've seen it scan over 600K files in a couple of minuets (duplicacy backup, in the process of moving to a new hard drive and need to store it temporarily on the Nas).
- apankrat 7y ago
  I've been playing with doing file change detection based on NTFS journals. There are some caveats, but it looks very promising. It's O(1) basically instead of O(file-size).
apankrat 7y ago
It works really well with Synology boxes. It also has quite a few Synology-specific tweaks, including support for their weird quirk of rounding up file timestamps to the nearest second and then subtracting a millisecond from it.

thrownaway954 7y ago

"If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them." Do you have any comparisons and/or benchmarks. Doing the quick 10 second scan of your site doesn't list any. So how do I know this is worth $30 for personal use and a whopping $150 for servers when robocopy does just fine and is free for both?

apankrat 7y ago
Fair point. Benchmarks are in the pipeline, will be adding them soon. Re: how do you know - there's a 2 week trial just for that.

mruszczyk 7y ago

I'm trying to wrap my head around the use case here. I love to support well crafted native software so don't take this as a negative question. I often use a tool such as Arq or Veeam to create snapshots in time of a folder or set of folders that then get uploaded to a remote storage location or repository, to recover files or documents from that time. I also use cloud storage providers to keep a copy of data that I am working on in sync between devices. I can't seem to tell but this product seems to be missing any additional features to really fill a role that I lack. It doesn't appear to make incremental copies of the data set to allow me to roll back in time, it does track deleted items but interim changes are not kept or tracked, so it's really just a capture of the state of the folder at last run time. It's compared to robocopy but the tool assumes an empty initial destination directory, there's no facility for copying data into a directory with content in it already, so it's can't be used as a general file transfer tool. It seems the best use case is for say transferring a directory of tarball dumps to a remote location over SMB?

ryanoshea 7y ago

I've used Bvckup 2 for years and found it the most reliable solution for PC-driven backup and replication jobs on Windows. It has a few high-level feature limitations that have bugged me (splitting a large folder backup across multiple smaller drives, for example), but it nails the core competencies better than anything else I've used.

apankrat 7y ago
Re: splitting a backup across several drives - this has unique UI requirements that aren't compatible with bvckup2's core Engine/UI model. The engine runs all backups autonomously and the UI merely shows the progress. Conversely, split backups are interactive - eject A, insert B, etc.
- ryanoshea 7y ago
  Sure, though my use case would look more like treating multiple destination devices as one logical AND, and running the backup only when all are present. I wouldn't need any guarantees w/r/t which files land on which device or the order they're written to, only that if sum(destination device storage) > size of folder to be backed up, everything from the folder makes it onto one of the devices.
  - apankrat 7y ago
    OK, I see. That's a good case, let me think about it.

agumonkey 7y ago

The website and application layout gives a sense of ultra high grade solidity. The swiss flag doesn't seems out of place here.

AnonC 7y ago

I tried bvckup2 maybe a year or two ago. But I stopped using it because of a couple of license issues (?). The thing is, my work machine is Windows but my employer doesn't have a good backup solution (other than OneDrive, which I don't like much because of its speed and restrictions). I wasn't sure if I could buy a personal license and use it to backup my work machine at my own cost, since said employer wouldn't pay for this or reimburse the cost. The personal license terms sounds strict to prohibit such use. I'm not sure if that's what was meant though. The new licensing model since June seems to address this, with no distinction on the kind of use. But the second issue was the cost of the license itself. It just is high for me (due to currency and other issues), and I couldn't find any discount codes either. Now I see that the prices seem to have increased further since June 2019 (so it's beyond my reach). I don't recall the feature set of the personal license from before, but the new Basic version seems pretty basic, and seems to have too many differences with the Pro Workstation version. Narrowing that gap could make for better tiers, IMO.

apankrat 7y ago
You are correct that you would've needed an Professional license for your case. Personal licenses were basically a 50% discounted option for backing up one's photos and music stash. Re: pricing - it is what it is, sorry. We are trying to move towards pro IT use and the pricing reflects that. Basic license is not really meant for home use, but rather for certain very specific replication scenarios. In fact, I am considering removing it altogether, because it only serves to confuse simpler (read, non-IT) home users into thinking that it's meant for them, while it _is_ quite restricted.

justsomeguy3591 7y ago

I used this back when I was on Windows - an absolute delight to use. As a developer I hope to someday create something as useful and well-designed as this tool!

apankrat 7y ago
Thanks, it's a very nice compliment.

nanobyte109 7y ago

Free alternative freefilesync.org

Xamayon 7y ago

Does this support backing up many TB many million file data sets to multiple smaller target disks? I've been looking for a utility which can handle filling a disk with as many complete files as possible, then allowing a new disk to be inserted to continue. This used to work great with tape utilities, but every hdd based copy/backup utility I've tried assumes your backups will always fit on a single target disk. Most also fail miserably after a few hundred thousand files, so it's nice to see this one supports millions sanely.

apankrat 7y ago
No, it doesn't support this type of usage. It's a very niche scenario and there are some hairy usability issues with it, especially post-backup.
- Xamayon 7y ago
  That's too bad, the site got my hopes up when I saw the 'unlimited size' capability. It's really limited by the size of the target. If you have any desire to support this kind of usage, I for one don't actually care what happens after the backup. It would not be an updated backup, just a copy the files to a set of disks fresh every so often. In addition to the target not being a limiting factor size wise, using independently mountable non-spanned/raided/etc disks can simplify recovery and improve recoverability of files long term. Even if a few disks fail in storage, the files on the others are perfectly accessible without special software or hardware, and if multiple backup disk sets exist, the total number of files lost would likely be very low.
  - apankrat 7y ago
    So I've been thinking about this scenario. Tell me this - say you have a mix of files of different sizes. Would you expect the program to try and pack as much files onto each drive (to maximize per-disk use) or copying files in order and switching disks when the next file doesn't fit is OK? If it's the latter, I think I might be able to cook up something command-line for this sort of case. This is still a very niche scenario, but you aren't the first one to ask about it.

rkagerer 7y ago

1MB executable and a short, simple EULA. Wish more software came like that. Given the lack of dependencies, have you considered offering an installer-free download? (The way Mark Russinovich does with SysInternals or Nir Sofer does with NirSoft tools?)

apankrat 7y ago
I have, but never got around to doing it. All other utilities (Diskovery, CCSIOBench, etc.) are like that though already.

mogpt 7y ago

I’ve been very happily using Bvckup for my personal and work files for a number of years now. Thanks very much for your pristine work.

apankrat 7y ago
Glad you like it :)

markwakeford 7y ago

Hello old friend :), wheres the DMG download ?? :P

apankrat 7y ago
Once Jobs is back and Macs are put back in order.

clausok 7y ago

I really like your landing page. FYI: on the feature comparison page, when you expand a row with the '+', the 'More on this...' links are not working yet.

apankrat 7y ago
Thanks for the FYI, should be working as expected now.

unreal37 7y ago

Congratulations! I bought this in 2015 and happy to see the license is still valid!

b3lvedere 7y ago

"Support for SAMBA quirks" As someone who has worked with a lot of NAS products, i can relate to this a lot.

farmerbb 7y ago

Was just wishing I had a tool like this tonight. Thanks for sharing.

bmh 7y ago

Any chance you'd be willing to share some revenue numbers?

apankrat 7y ago
No, sorry.

kuroguro 7y ago

Love the UI. Did you use some off the shelf UI library or is that custom?

apankrat 7y ago
Thanks, it's custom. It's simpler than it looks. Except for fade-in/out transitions. It's absolutely ridiculous how much effort it takes to make them flicker-free.

kup0 7y ago

I love the focus on the UI/UX and performance. Looks like a solid, highly-efficient application, something that is sorely missing (or at least hard to find) on Windows

dmitripopov 7y ago

Hello from a fellow Windows mISV! I'd like to say that there are only two of us remaining, but RSDN forum "Shareware and business" is still alive and kicking.

apankrat 7y ago
There are quite a few small ISVs out there. From the top of my head and in areas related to my own - Arq backup, SoftPerfect, Syncovery. I don't think Macrium and Glasswire are terribly big either. Ditto for 2BrightSparks. HexRays. Boatload of smaller shops in the 3D tools/plugins domain. Lots and lots of examples, they are just hard to notice because they look and feel bigger than they actually are.

hollerith 7y ago

Huh. Why "Bvckup" and not "Backvp"?

apankrat 7y ago
It's an upside down A... or at least that was the idea, which frankly wasn't the very best one. I still wonder how many sales we routinely lose because of the name.

AuCalc 7y ago

What you think about aucalc.com?