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Greetings all!

Does anyone have any suggestions for a decent backup software that works like the old SyncToy did?
I used it to backup my Desktop and my entire D drive to an external drive. It would copy over all changes and delete the old versions.
I've tried numerous modern backup programs and so far I've never found one that I like. The one I'm currently using doesn't delete the old versions, so it actually eventually fills up the external drive.

Basically, I want it to keep a mirror image of what I tell it to monitor.

I know there's got to be something out there that works... it doesn't even need to be free, as long as it does what I want.

Thanks!

I think you could use robocopy. Just need to use Task Schedule to run it when you want it to.

I use Macrium Reflect for my backup needs as I make image backups. Depending on your needs, you might be able to use it or something like it. They have a free trial, so you can test it out to see if it could fit your needs. I think Windows has something built in (though they seem to be pushing the backup to OneDrive :/)

Use lucky backup from the following link.
It will do all you want and automatically if you schedule it.

+1 for what @miquelfire recommends. I use Macrium & Robocopy and have never had any issues

Akin said:

works like the old SyncToy

Click to expand...

Having never used SyncToy, all I have to offer is this:

For file-by-file backups I use the hugely versatile SyncBackPro (alongside my Macrium Reflect for full-disk images.)

There's a free version of SyncBack called SyncBackFree which is still very versatile, and would certainly meet your needs as a SyncToy substitute.

(The 'Pro' version of SyncBack can work with the Cloud-storage schemes - S3 etc. - and of course it has other bells & whistles, but I used the free version for years to do similar backups to the ones you (the OP) have described.)

Akin said:

Greetings all!

Does anyone have any suggestions for a decent backup software that works like the old SyncToy did?

Click to expand...

Does SyncToy not work correctly for you? I use it in combination with Macrium Reflect with no problems (Windows 10 21H2).

I know that it's been discontinued but the WayBack Machine has a copy in it's archives (https://web.archive.org/web/2019032...-2c452deed3b6/SyncToySetupPackage_v21_x64.exe)

Sorry, I should elaborate a bit. I'm not interested in making some kind of image, I've never had luck with those and for this purpose, I just want something that goes through the entire HDD file-by-file every twelve hours or whatever and if anything has changed, it mirrors the change on to the backup drive. Changes, deletions, new versions, whatever. So many programs seem like they would do what I want but they actual go through folders, not entire drives. I could probably set my D Drive up with everything in a folder, but that seems silly to me. I just want to back up the whole drive.

SyncToy stopped working for me some time back. I know it still works for some people, but for me, no luck. I believe it would still run if I manually launched it, but I could no longer set it up on a schedule or anything. I had it set top run on b ootup and every twelve hours thereafter.

It was quite irritating when it stopped working.

Windows has a feature for developers, which I have used before in Java, that will notify a running app of EVERY change to a specific directory (or sub-directory under that directory.) Someone could probably make a "journaling backup utility" based on that approach, but I have never looked to see if anyone has. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/change-journals

What you probably really want is a backup utility that can do what are called incremental backups. The way that works is you make a full backup every so often (depending on how much you change things) and then you make incremental backups that only backup what has changed since the last full backup. The problem with incremental backups is they usually need to be applied, one after the other, on top of the full backup, to get you back to where you were. This has two downsides: 1. it will take more time; and 2. if you have multiple incremental backups, you have for failure points.

I know you aren't looking for a cloud solution, but I gave up trying to keep up with local backups quite some time ago, and use BackBlaze to back up my machines. BackBlaze intelligently figures out what to back up, and monitors the drive(s) for changed files, etc., They just upped their rates, but now will save files for up to a year, instead of 30 days, so there's that. BackBlaze has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions - I lost a C drive on a Windows machine and was able to recover all the data for my installed programs, and I lost an external USB drive with over 50,000 images and I was able to restore every single one of them, including ones that I had edited just a day or so before the drive crashed.

miquelfire said:

I think you could use robocopy. Just need to use Task Schedule to run it when you want it to.

I use Macrium Reflect for my backup needs as I make image backups. Depending on your needs, you might be able to use it or something like it. They have a free trial, so you can test it out to see if it could fit your needs. I think Windows has something built in (though they seem to be pushing the backup to OneDrive :/)

Click to expand...

In reply to your Post. I too use Macrium Reflect for imaging & backups on my Windows PC's. The program interface can be daunting for initial users but the application does its job well. I'm imaging to external HDD's. For ubuntu (backups) I use Timeshift, again very effective in what it does but be careful of which files/folders that you select to backup

Check out FreeFileSync, https://freefilesync.org/manual.php?topic=realtimesync for an overview. I don't use the real time sync feature but use the base program quite a bit. As the name suggests there is a free version with near full functionality. I use it enough and find it useful enough even without using real time sync that I opt for the donation edition which adds a few extras.

This page from @Steve might be useful although it's three years old. At the time he was endorsing sync.com and sync thing. I haven't used either of them.


Also, for what it's worth, I still use Sync Toy periodically on Windows 7.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron

rfrazier said:

This page from @Steve might be useful although it's three years old. At the time he was endorsing sync.com and sync thing. I haven't used either of them.

https://forums.grc.com/threads/my-favorite-utilities-gadgets-services.163/

Also, for what it's worth, I still use Sync Toy periodically on Windows 7.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron

Click to expand...

Steve’s use case was syncing two computers, and his methods work great for that. I want to sync one computer to an external HDD, so, totally different use case.

Dave New said:

I know you aren't looking for a cloud solution, but I gave up trying to keep up with local backups quite some time ago, and use BackBlaze to back up my machines. BackBlaze intelligently figures out what to back up, and monitors the drive(s) for changed files, etc., They just upped their rates, but now will save files for up to a year, instead of 30 days, so there's that. BackBlaze has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions - I lost a C drive on a Windows machine and was able to recover all the data for my installed programs, and I lost an external USB drive with over 50,000 images and I was able to restore every single one of them, including ones that I had edited just a day or so before the drive crashed.

Click to expand...

I already sync to the cloud as well. But, I like to have a local backup as well as a cloud backup…

Sync is not a backup. Backup might be a sync. You don't want sync because there is only one PC. You want a backup, so use a tool that does backups.

PHolder said:

Sync is not a backup. Backup might be a sync. You don't want sync because there is only one PC. You want a backup, so use a tool that does backups.

Click to expand...

SyncToy, of course, was a backup and not a sync. That’s why I used it and was hoping to find a modern replacement.

SyncThing has settings when you configure the folders to sync (which can be modified after). Each folder can be set for 'send receive', 'send only', and 'receive only'. Depending on which of the 3 you enable it will sync differently, both ways or either. There are also options on a per folder basis for versioning schemes and cleanup. SyncThing will not create the equivalent of an image backup, it is for file backups.

While SyncThing is not technically a backup, if configured correctly it can serve as a good file backup. In my case I use it syncing to a Raspberry Pi with an external HDD over a LAN. My sync folders are all set for 'send receive' so an addition or deletion on either side will be 'mirrored' to the other. While syncing to my laptop can only occur when my laptop is powered up, I have a NAS on my router which syncs one of the NAS folders through a LAN that syncs 24x7 via wifi.

I configured SynThing some time back and haven't had to touch it since. For a while I even had it syncing pictures from my cell phone. Setting it up was somewhat confusing to me, but I used test folders and files to sort it out. As already mentioned it works great and reliably with lots of options. If you haven't, install it and play with test files and folders. For me, the send/ receive options were the most confusing part- but that's just me. The documents explain it as do drop downs while you make the settings.

I only sync a few folders that change from my laptop. I run periodic images with Macrium Reflect to a portable USB drive. So far no issues with Macrium, and I like that a backup image can be mounted and run in conjunction with Virtual Box. I have the paid version of Macrium so I am not sure if the free version allows running an image.

Hope that helps and answers some questions. If SyncThing sounds like it will serve your needs by all means give it a try. Playing with test files and folders is a safe way to test it out and will make it easy to abandon the program if it doesn't work out.

Akin said:

SyncToy, of course, was a backup and not a sync. That’s why I used it and was hoping to find a modern replacement.

Click to expand...

SyncToy is backup or sync according to which you ask it to do. I still use it for on-demand backup of the church laptop, which is only powered-on a few times a week.

Have you looked at Rclone from https://rclone.org/install/. They have a Windows version.

Akin said:

Greetings all!

Does anyone have any suggestions for a decent backup software that works like the old SyncToy did?
I used it to backup my Desktop and my entire D drive to an external drive. It would copy over all changes and delete the old versions.
I've tried numerous modern backup programs and so far I've never found one that I like. The one I'm currently using doesn't delete the old versions, so it actually eventually fills up the external drive.

Basically, I want it to keep a mirror image of what I tell it to monitor.

I know there's got to be something out there that works... it doesn't even need to be free, as long as it does what I want.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

As another contributor said, SyncBack, even the Free version, will do what you want.
Personally I have used the Pro version for many years, but for friends and family I get them started with the Free or the SE version. Do yourself a favour and check if out.

FYI about Backblaze cloud backups: unlike Steve's favorite sync.com, which can not read your files, Backblaze can read your files. Or not. Depends on how you configure things. And, their terminology in this regard is inconsistent.

A slight aside but backup related. Like many I have a number of external drives in and out of cases. I use many for various backups but don't normally use them often enough to remember what's on them or when I last ran a quick SR pass to validate them. Post-Its usually fall off before I need one.

Recently I've been playing with NFC tags and have been looking for more uses for them. As it happened my router's NAS drive got ungracefully disconnected corrupting a file(s). While waiting for it to get fixed I thought why not put an NFC tag on all my drives so when needed all I had to do was a quick scan with my cell phone rather than plug it in and spin it up just to see what's on it.

For anyone interested, most newer cell phones are NFC capable, but the feature may need to be enabled. A multi platform free application called NFCTools will read, write and erase tags. The actual NFC stickers can be bought on Amazon and a number of other places, often under $1 each even in small quantities. For disks you should be sure your tags are 'on metal' type, standard tags will not work if stuck on metal. I suggest using NTAG216 or NTAG215 as they have a larger memory size, 888 and 504 bytes respectively and have the widest compatibility. Unless write protected they can be erased and updated 100K times and retain data 10 years.

I plan to put the drive's make, model, when it was last validated, and date of last backup. Space permitting a list of file names or at least a description of contents. Most tags are 25mm/ 1inch diameter so putting a second tag for more storage is possible. Tags can be programmed for many automated tasks aside from just storing information, but that's another story.

There's a lot of good stuff in this thread that I'll try not to repeat, although I will note that synchronization is more of a mirror of current state than true backup. The problem with synchronizing is that if you're not careful, you can be vulnerable to accidental overwrites and deletes, especially overwrites. If you change a file, and then run a backup, then if you find that you need the older copy of the file, that one may not be recoverable. A simple way around that is to set your synchronization to not delete older stuff, but as you've noted, the problem with that is that you eventually fill up all the available backup space with a lot of clutter.

The easiest way around that is in periodically making snapshots of old backups, so that you have copies of older stuff. How often you do that and how many generations you keep is really the same question as how frequently you back up -- how much data can you afford to lose?

If you want synchronization, I think you can do a lot better than SyncToy -- the design is old, and I don't think it's really intended for large-scale synchronization that you're doing with your backups. For several years, I used that to synchronize a few GB of data from my hard drive to a traveling drive. It worked for me, but I found that it wasn't especially robust. I eventually transitioned to FreeFileSync, and once I got used to the differences in UI, I've found that to be a lot sturdier. The UI indicates that it can be used for larger-scale backups, although I'm not sure I would do that.

Robocopy has been mentioned as an option, but I think it may have some of the same issues I've noted. To me, the main benefit is that Robocopy will do copying that preserves ownerships and permissions on files. That can be useful if you're doing large-scale copying of system files (although that doesn't get you bootable media).

Moving to a tool that is expressly designed for backups may be the better bet for you. Some use synchronization, but not all. A lot of tools are database-based that allow tracking of multiple copies over time, but not indefinite retention, either. If you're using something that is tracked by a database, then as with synchronization, your backups are updated where only stuff that has changed since the most recent backup is written (media size and bandwidth). However, you have the ability of being able not only to do a full restore from the most recent backup, but where you do a recovery based on a specific time index, including the ability to get to earlier versions of files that have more recent backups. You may not need that kind of thing frequently, but it's nice to have on occasion.

Personally, I'm making use of Duplicati, for a variety of reasons. It's not a sync backup, but it does have snapshotting capacities, and corresponding ability to do recovery by time index. Duplicati is multi-platform, and I use it on Windows, Linux and Mac OS, and it has the ability for me to write to a networked drive, whether LAN or cloud, if I choose, and encryption of backups. Because it's open source it's free. It's worth noting that most commercial backup tools will not allow you to back up to a network drive on an unpaid tier.

One commercial tool that I like that's free for individual users is Veeam, and I provide support for this for a number of users. I believe that it's sync-based, but supports time-stamped recoveries, and where it's possible to write to a network drive, supports encryption of backups and also to do full image recoveries. Veeam prefers cloud-based backup where they can sell storage space, but for individual users, it's not a problem to write to an external hard drive with the free version.

Speaking of encryption -- if you have a tool that encrypts your backups, you can write to pretty much any device that the backup tool can address. Conversely, if you have encrypted media, then you can use nearly any backup tool that you want, and still have encrypted backups

Several other backup that I know about, but haven't reviewed: AOMEIBackupper (supports full-image), Cobian Reflector, Iperius Backup, Uranium Backup. I think that many of these are not sync (.ZIP archives), although I think most support encryption. However, if the tool itself adequately supports the version management process, you may find that you don't need a sync approach as much as you think.

I'm not being critical of sync -- there are plenty of use cases where it's definitely the best way of going. However, if you use it, it's wise to know where the trade-offs are, and where a sync approach can have problems.

Ultimately, an effective backup regimen relies not only on multiple media, but multiple methodologies, and even multiple tools. Depending on what your recovery scenarios might be, you probably need more than one approach. It's entirely different to be recovering a few files or folders (from an "oops" overwrite or delete) as opposed to a full system restore as a result of a disk failure.

I’m not in the position where I need timestamped incremental backups where I can recover several versions back of a file and stuff. I just want a reasonably up-to date exact copy of my desktop and my entire D drive, which is where I store all my data, pictures, music, etc. Not sure if I mentioned it or not but I had SyncToy run on bootup and then every twelve hours, so it made sure my external drive had a complete copy of everything when I started, and then if I were doing a marathon or something, it would update again after a while. It rarely ran the twelve hour backup.

Several suggestions have been mentioned here, I’ll be looking at them when I next get a chance. Work is a pain right now though.

I had meant to mention the "nightmare scenario" on synchronization -- ransomware. If your backup media is continuously attached, and you get hit by ransomware, and don't catch it before synchronization runs, then not only is all your data encrypted, but all your backups as well. This is the case of accidental overwrite on a very large scale.

If you do your backups correctly, then the cost of a ransomware attack may be limited to the time it takes to do a restore, but there are a number of variants there. The only thing that you can reliably assume is safe from ransomware is data that ransomware can't touch, namely detached media. Depending on how your backups are set up, you may be able to protect your backup archives from getting hit, even if the content (or part of the content) may be encrypted. If you have the older data available, then that can be recovered from older backups.

As noted previously, one simple way of doing that is merely to make sure that you have regular snapshots of your backups (and relocated to other storage).

But the bottom line is that you have to assume that the most recent backup of your data may be unusable, and if it is, you need additional copies.

Besides that, part of an effective backup plan is including "fire drills", where you actually test the recoverability of your data. If you haven't proven that you can recover your data through testing, then you don't have reliable backups. I will note that I have gotten burned on this in the past -- that includes backups to bad media, backups passing through a bad controller on a backup device, and configuration errors in backup software, causing essential data to not be backed up at all.

As much as you might want otherwise, effective backup is not a "set and forget" task.

A lot of good info, I have to check out Duplicati and Veeam. Many of the larger old 'no longer used' disks I have are storing full disk images, hence my wanting a quick way to ID what a drive's contents are. Using the old disks that way accomplishes having multiple isolated, rarely connecting to anything backups. Every once in a while I mount the oldest of the images, most recently using Macrium, and take a look at the contents to see if there's anything I want to copy before deleting the entire image for space.

Since most of those old drives are not in enclosures I am even less tempted to connect them to anything unless I have a real need to do so. Maybe not the ideal solution but it puts what would otherwise be dust collectors to use and keeps a number of full disk images isolated. For file sync I use local and cloud copies.