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Anyone know of a good free backup utility? Preferably one that can do uncompressed incremental backups and has powerful include/exclude rules. I've been using Cobian Backup
http://www2.educ.umu.se/~cobian/
which does most of what I want, but it doesn't create absolute paths when backups are uncompressed.

This is a VB script that utilized rsync for windows to create a backup (on a NTFS drive) of folders and files while maintaining the owner and read/write permissions of the files. For the next backup it creates a new folder but only create hard links for files that have not changed, thus you'll "see" all the files in each folder but it will only be stored once.

www.heise.de/ct/ftp/06/09/126/

Drawback: The comments in the script are in German.

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Ciao
toralf

Thanks, but I was looking for something a bit more straight forward and with a windows GUI.

With Traybackup you can perform backups not only time depending. You can do it at start or shutdown or manual.

Only german.

http://www.traybackup.de/

Thanks again, but I don't speak German and I don't think it's freeware either.

abakt is freeware: http://www.xs4all.nl/~edienske/abakt/

I did try this a while back. I can't remember what it was like though. It looks like they have a version 2 out now but this version (1.86) looks like its free. I know the one I had was free anyway-

http://www.backupanswers.com/freewinbackup/

I'm actually using Nero Backup software at the moment as it is bundled with nero burning ROM.

Thanks, something like Abakt is exactly what I was looking for.

I chose Cobian after looking at various backup tools (didn't saw Abakt at the time, these utilities are numerous) and it looked fine.
Can you tell more on the issue you found with this software?

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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

It's basically like I said. If you choose not to use compression, Cobian Backup will not create absolute paths at the destination. For example, if you were trying to backup a folder with the path C:\Backup\Software\Utilities to your E drive, the program would only create E:\Utilities at the destination. If you choose to use ZIP compression, this problem does not occur. I don't know if this is a bug or just an oversight. I Emailed the author about this issue, but I haven't received a response yet.

SyncBack Freeware is a great tool, give it a try, you wont regret.


SyncBack Freeware

FileBackPC from Maximum Output Software has worked like a champ for me. The feature list is very thorough.

Lately, though, I've just used robocopy.exe (from the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit) and scripted it with good success. I find that I don't use 1/100th of the features in FileBackPC and scripting is more straightforward using robocopy.

-darren

It isn't free, looks like a shareware for me. Not a problem for a good software, but subject states "free".

Well, I discovered XXCOPY before finding that Robocopy exists, and I never looked at the later...

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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, but I think I've found everything that I was looking for in Abakt. Anyone who hasn't taken a look at it really should. It's feature list is pretty complete for a free backup utility. Of course, if anyone can think of other possibilities which meet all the requirements, feel free to post them. Mind you, Cobian Backup is just as flexible and if it wasn't for the issue which I mentioned I'd still be using it. It does have a couple of advantages over Abakt like built-in scheduling and the ability to run completely hidden. Oh well, perhaps the problem with Cobian Backup will be addressed in a future release. I'm still waiting to hear back from the author. He usually responds, but sometimes it takes him a while.

Absolutely right. I'm sorry I missed that.

-darren