free backup tool
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Does anyone know a good backup tool for windows 10? My father in law wants to backup his documents onto a usb hard drive. (he doesn't want to put it in the cloud, so no dropbox or onedrive or the likes). Basically it should just take a copy of his documents and images (about 6 GB or something) every month or so... I could write something, but wanted to check first if something was already available. the simpler the better. thanks.
V.
(MQOTD rules and previous solutions)
I've been using Macrium Reflect[^] since January, and I'm pretty happy with it: once set up it just works. Currently my setup is configured to do incremental backups daily and full backups weekly, with a set rotation of 6 weeks (i. e., backups older than 6 weeks get overwritten) You can freely configure what disk or subdirectories to backup and where to put it (just needs to be on a different drive). If your PC isn't running at the scheduled times, the backup will run the next time you turn it on. When it starts, a dialog will pop up that will let you defer it, but I never really needed that as it doesn't interfere with running applications or even games. Restoration works pretty well, too, and I even used it once to clone my installation to a secondary SSD. Speed is great: the initial backup of my fresh Windows 7 installation (~36GB) took ~70s (source: SSD, target: SSHD). Windows 10 was similar. Incremental backups take less than a minute, spending most of the time searching for changes. The backup data is compressed, and that greatly helps for writing the data onto my SSHD as even a full backup fits into the SSD write buffer. Obviously it would also help in case you wish to store your backup on an USB drive or other external drives with a low(er) bandwidth connection.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)