Live Backup System - Evaluation for new development

[RSBasic]

Hello

On November 8th, 2015 I published my program Live Backup System in Pure-Board.
Live Backup System is an automated real-time backup software. Almost like Software-RAID 1. It automatically detects and backup your new and changed files.
Initially, my program had only one task: backup files in real time
But features were added later:

• Backup to external media with detection of whether an external drive has been connected
• Backup files from FTP
• Auto compress in ZIP archives
• Backup old versions of files
• Lots of settings

The source code has historically grown poorly. A code refactoring would be too time-consuming due to the size of the project.
So I want to redevelop the project, but planning is very important.
I would now like to collect your ideas, opinions and information.

Please post here:

• What features do you need?
• Do you have any ideas?

Thanks

[Tenaja]

Great idea to make an open source backup! I haven't looked at your original yet, but here are some features that I would appreciate. I work out of the office frequently, so ability to sync and still backup seamlessly in return is a time saver.

I have a small NAS; backup to either usb drive out or networked drive should be considered. (I've had some programs choke on NAS files. IIRC, I think it was a compiler that crashed if an include file was on the NAS.)

Automatically backup on schedule, if the target is available. Good log files with failures.

Reminders if it's been too long since a backup? (With adjustable time)

Ability to select or exclude folders, including appdata folders. From one drive (nas or not) to another drive (nas or not).

Cross platform... I use mostly windows, but also Linux.

Ability to set up a new target drive or folder with just 1 or two clicks.

That's just off the top of my head for now.

[Caronte3D]

I use a backup system that backup a folder several times in cascade, this way I have multiple folders of the same origin but at diferent times.
Example:

If I want to backup "MyFolder", then I create "MyFolder_1", "MyFolder_2", "MyFolder_3"

Then I backup the folders each a stipuled time lapse (ex: 15 minutes) that way:
"MyFolder_2" is backed into "MyFolder_3",
"MyFolder_1" is backed into "MyFolder_2",
"MyFolder" is backed into "MyFolder_1",

So... I have 3 backups, one of 15 minutes, one of 30 and the las one of 45 minutes

Deppending of the backups job, I use more o less backup versions and more or less time lapse.

[Bitblazer]

When i created my own backup software, i made it so it watches for media changes and recognizes specific portable media as backup drives for a specific kind of backup.

For example i would insert an USB stick with the top folder "source backup" and it would trigger a backup of all source files in my development folder that where changed during the last 7 days. Once a week, i would create a system image backup. That way i would simply insert a usb drive into a development machine and it would store a folder of all recently changed software projects. So the backup was quickly done and if some kind of major change has affected too many projects, i would just insert a different usb drive with a different top folder for a complete source backup.

Making top folders and having a background service watch for media changes and invoke the appropriate backup method based on the media type inserted, has proved very useful.

Use an archive format that can actually recover from media errors if possible. Though in practice it was not that important, but what is important, is a way to use remove servers. Instead of doing 30 backups of the same unchanged data, use incremental backups. Don't forget to make a mechanism to include databases. Their tables and data.

ps: oh and don't forget about ntfs streams if you backup a NTFS drive. Too many people and software products can't deal with them at all.