7 ms·
Ask HN: Your recommendations for Windows PC backup software solutions?
I'm looking for a replacement for Windows PC Backup (Windows 7). Not VMs. Ideally it should offer a backup to USB/NAS locally, and also backup offsite to a cloud service.
If the cloud service offers client-side encryption then double bonus points! Also, Synology support is a triple bonus!
Spideroak, Tresorit, Crashplan, Acronis, Backblaze, Carbonite, Mozy, HiDrive? Any others?
Recommendations from people using these services are very welcome.
I'm looking for a proper incremental disk-wide backup solution that offers local USB backups too, so Dropbox, Onedrive and Google Drive don't qualify. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that assumption.
- Hopka 12y agoI tried a lot of the popular Backup solutions (like Acronis and others I don't remember now), but none of them really worked for me. I'm using HardlinkBackup for incremental, local USB backups (periodically creates a new folder with a full snapshot of the entire disk but de-duplicates across snapshots with NTFS hard links). http://www.lupinho.net/hardlinkbackup/ http://www.lupinho.net/hardlinkbackup/ For Cloud Backups I'm a happy Backblaze customer.
- deathtrader666 12y agoThere's also Hubic - by the guys behind OVH. They're the cheapest ones around with plans starting from EUR 1 / month for 100GB. https://hubic.com/en/offers/ https://hubic.com/en/offers/ They have data centers in France, so that's one more barrier against governmental snooping.
- tmcpro 12y agoI had a pretty good experience with Backblaze. I tried out Crashplan and Carbonite but they by default don't upload some of the file types and sizes I needed.
- junto 12y agoCan you elaborate of the file types issues?
- j_s 12y agohttp://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Troubleshooting/What_Is_Not_Backing_Up http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Troubleshooting/W... https://carbonite.service-now.com/carbonite/kb_view.do?correlation_id=1381 https://carbonite.service-now.com/carbonite/kb_view.do?corre...
- therobot24 12y agoMy problem with backblaze is that it takes soooo long to backup everything. It's got a good version control setup and web interface, but seriously, it took like 2 or 3 months before it had at least 80% of my data on their servers.
- KhalPanda 12y agoOut of interest, how much data were you backing up? I ask since if I were to go for a cloud-backup, I'd be doing 3-4TB. Thanks.
- mctx 12y agoI've found its typically limited by my upload speed (ADSL2+ at 100kb/s up), took me a few months for a couple of hundred GB.
- therobot24 12y ago~1.5TB Like the other user said, it is limited by speed + there is a cap of amount you can backup per day
- jbrooksuk 12y agoWe use Veeam for our backups. Very easy to setup and offers incremental backups.
- junto 12y agoIs this for Windows desktops, or VMs?
- vnuk 12y agohttp://www.duplicati.com/ http://www.duplicati.com/ Windows port of duply/duplicity. Client side encryption possible and you can use USB/NAS as target or S3 ...
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoI looked at a range of backup solutions - http://alicious.com/cloud-backup-solutions/ http://alicious.com/cloud-backup-solutions/ - for a simple one-folder backup from a work computer. I too settled on duplicati. Originally I was using it with Microsoft's online cloud storage (skydrive I think they were calling it, it's changed now due to TM action) but that stopped working and now I use gdrive instead (or whatever that is now, gapps storage or something).
- ericcholis 12y agoI've been using SyncBack Pro in various scenarios for a while: http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbpro.html http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbpro.html It's extremely configurable, supports many source/destination options, and pretty cheap. It's not hosted, SAAS, or cloud-based. But, just point it to an S3 bucket and you've got the same thing. One scenario I have is a daily snapshot of files, copied locally to a YYYY-MM-DD folder, then zipped, and uploaded to an S3 bucket. Another scenario is twice daily rsync-style backup that copies changes on a large directory to a backup location.
- polskibus 12y ago+1 for SyncBack. With free version you can do NAS backup without problems. Not sure about the Amazon backup. But if you have Synology then you can set it up to do backups to Glacier from NAS instead of from your PC.
- junto 12y agoI had real problems with the Glacier backup on Synology. Always failed.
- svec 12y ago+1 for SyncBack. I use it for in-home backups to a NAS (Synology) as well as another PC on the network. Works perfectly, very configurable, and the Pro version has various cloud options.
- plasma 12y agoMicrosoft Azure cloud has both HyperV recovery and separate data backup tools.
- josephagoss 12y agoCrashplan. I've used it for years and has never failed me. They have an option for a client side key too, so they can't even access your files.
- junto 12y agoFancy sharing any experiences of having to restore from Crashplan?
- Pamar 12y agoI second Crashplan. I use it to back up a directory of my office machine (2GB at the moment) where I keep all the current project stuff, including Outlook archives for the last 3-years of emails. The whole directory is inside a Truecrypt disk, btw (but I am running Crashplan after mounting the Truecrypt volume, so for Crashplan the files are visible). I did a few (say half a dozen in the last 3-years) restores of a specific file and I did a full restore of the whole directory to a completely different machine (a Mac) due to problems with my old laptop - they replaced the HD and I had to keep working for a couple of days before getting it back. And another full restore when they finally replaced the laptop with a new one. In all these cases it worked without a hitch. I also played a bit with their "backup to a friend's computer" thing, but haven't tested it in depth. Never used their online version, though, so I can't say anything about that.
- icebraining 12y agoAnother Crashplan user here. When I reinstalled Windows, I restored a whole account (user files, not system files) from a previous backup and it worked fine. It's not very fast on either direction, but I never had any issues with it.
- mml 12y agoI've restored over 100gb from cp without issue. The most important feature is multiple offsite backups with their free p2p system. My data is in my basement, across town at 3 different friends' houses, and another copy across the country. Nothing short of a meteor strike will cause data loss at this point. And it's free.
- fenesiistvan 12y agoUsing KLS backup in the last years with no issues: http://www.kls-soft.com/klsbackup/ http://www.kls-soft.com/klsbackup/
- blokhasie 12y agoI've been using https://bvckup2.com/ https://bvckup2.com/ to backup large files to a USB drive. Hasn't failed me yet.
- junto 12y agoIsn't this just file sync, and not incremental backups? I.e. if I accidentally delete a file on my PC, the synced version disappears as well? No recovery possible.
- bbrks 12y agoFrom the homepage: "Archiving of deleted items Move backup copies of deleted items into a special archive directory and delete them from there after a grace period."
- huhtenberg 12y agoThis is a phenomenally well-done software and I am too using it for daily backups, but it's likely not what OP wants with his "disk-wide" conditional. He needs something that does full-system backups, e.g. http://ax64.com http://ax64.com
- corford 12y agoSpideroak for photos, docs etc. (and Bitorrent Sync so my laptop and desktop are always in sync). Robocopy and an external USB drive for a monthly backup of large media. I've been using Spideroak for ~3 years now and its been faultless.
- jason46 12y ago+1 Robocopy script with external drive.
- reboog711 12y agoThis isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I I swear by Backup for Workgroups: http://www.backup-for-workgroups.com/ http://www.backup-for-workgroups.com/ It contains two pieces, a server and a client. You have to setup the server yourself. This server can be local within your network, on the same machine, or remote over the Internet. I use it for full machine backup; and the two times I have had hard drives die on me; I was up and working [with all programs, files, etc.. ] in under a day. That included purchasing a new hard drive. It backs up on schedule, so I don't have to think about it. It can send email notifications of any problems, with your running out of space on the repository, or when a backup is complete. My backup server is on-site; I've never had the bandwidth to mirror the repository off-site; although you could do so in theory. My offsite backup plan was to send a hard drive to Amazon S3 so they could pre-load the data to a bucket; then use a S3 to Disk Drive mapping program--such as JungleDisk--and set that as a sync drive within Backup for Workgroups. But, I haven't gotten around to setting that up. http://www.backup-for-workgroups.com/faqs/faqs-mirroring-data.html http://www.backup-for-workgroups.com/faqs/faqs-mirroring-dat... I backup five different machines; and my repo is about a half a terabyte.
- dirktheman 12y agoI have a Synology DS 1813+ in SHR-2. It backs up to Crashplan automatically. My files are reasonably safe on the Synology, but in case of disaster I have the Crashplan backup as a last resort. Uploading several TB is slow, but since the NAS is configured as a headless client it doesn't bother me. Plus, Crashplan is only $5 a month, so you can't go wrong there... FYI, there's a fantastic tutorial for setting up Crashplan to work with your Synology: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UPDATED2014HowToSetupCrashPlanCloudBackupOnASynologyNASRunningDSM50.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UPDATED2014HowToSetupCrashPlan...
- junto 12y agoFunny. I was just reading this update from Scott. Crashplan can also backup your PC data to a USD drive as well right? That would mean you have two local backups (USB and NAS) then one offsite held in the Cloud with Crashplan as well? That's kind of what I'm looking for.
- trutz 12y agoCheck this. Ugly, but feature-rich: http://allwaysync.com http://allwaysync.com
- jonathanoliver 12y agoA few years ago I looked at about 30 different backup solutions and finally settled on CrashPlan for the following reasons: 1. Can send backups local drive, cloud, or P2P. 2. Encrypts files locally 3. Incremental/delta, e.g. a 5-byte change to a 10GB file doesn't resend the whole thing. A lot of the named services from the OP are cloud only. Try backing up TBs of data. It'll take over a month, depending upon internet connection speed. CrashPlan lets you backup to an attached hard drive and then send it to them in the mail (sneakernet). Then, when you want to restore the entire archive, they can send you a drive in the mail if you'd like. The one place CrashPlan falls down is doing full-disk backups or images/snapshots. It's only good for backups of individual files. I've got a copy of CrashPlan running on my DS212+ NAS (http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/ http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/) so it serves as a peer and I push to the cloud as well.
- gh02t 12y agoI second this. Crashplan is a great service with very generous pricing, considering that you get unlimited space and file versioning. You can run it directly on the machine you're backing up, but I have mine on my Linux home server in a headless setup. All my computers back up to it via Bacula, which is then backed up via Crashplan.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ygra 12y agoAfter asking a similar question here ages ago, one thing that was recommended was ShadowProtect [1] Incremental backups take in the order of seconds to complete, thus running them every 15 or 30 minutes doesn't hurt at all. I have it set up to make such backups during my usual waking hours (to keep the number of snapshots a bit lower) and additionally rsync my backup volume from the NAS to a backup account in a datacenter. Basically I wanted to have a full-machine backup with incremental snapshots. And since I don't use libraries because I don't use Explorer, File History was, although very nice, not adequate for my needs. [1] http://www.storagecraft.com/products/shadowprotect-desktop-backup http://www.storagecraft.com/products/shadowprotect-desktop-b...
- reiichiroh 12y agoI use Macrium Reflect for imaging. They offer a good completely free Home version to try. This, after Acronis TrueImage served me well for a couple of years but got too bloated with the shovelware. Reflect has both imaging and file backup. Had to use Symantec Ghost only 3 years ago only to find Symantec has done jack squat to improve the PowerQuest DriveImage they bought. It had terrible network drivers and antiquated Win95-era boot drivers and special workarounds for ancient network cards like 3Com.
- Ixiaus 12y agoCrashPlan - I love it.
- timotei 12y agoI use QtdSync (which uses rsync under the hood) for about 2-3 years, and I'm satisfied with it. I've also set up some scheduled backup tasks as well. You should try it and see for yourself.
- mcdevhammer 12y agoOne I haven't seen mentioned yet is http://www.evault.com http://www.evault.com. Industrial grade and very feature rich. Can't really compare to other products as I haven't really used any myself, I just used to work there.
- BridgetG 12y agoI would check out NovaBACKUP for Windows PC backup software. It supports Windows 7, will allow you to backup to USB or to a local NAS device (including Synology) and offers cloud backup options. It also offers full, incremental and differential backups. Hope this helps: http://www.novastor.com/en/software/windows-backup http://www.novastor.com/en/software/windows-backup
- joanou 12y agoAltDrive because it is fast, robust, has a private security key option, unobtrusive, open/locked file support, and easy to use. It does not do local backup though. Works on MAc, Windows and Linux.