Looking for software to back up portions of a drive

[SNGX1275]

Been a long time since I've asked anything on here, been out of much of the 'enthusiast' scene of computers for a while...

With that said, I have a brand new shiny 8TB external drive that I'm going to be storing media on (various videos and music and a lot of RAW+jpeg photos from a DSLR). I'm not rapidly gaining any new content this is more to just alleviate some storage concerns I have with my current setup.

My current setup is movies, tv shows, music and pics. Those are currently over 4 different physical drives. For simplicity I'd like to get all of that onto the 8TB drive (also power saving reasons, but that is sort of a distant second just to simplicity and if necessary portability).

Now I realize in doing so that puts the data at a huge risk of single drive failure. But I also know that my current setup (prior to the 8TB) is enough space to handle everything.

So here is what I'm looking for. I would like some software that I can set to either incrementally or manually if I need to or have to back up specific directories (think movies, tv, music, photos) to very specific locations (ie - the drives they are currently on). So basically I need something that would sync say I:\Movies to F:\Movies and I:\Pictures to maybe E:\Pictures, ect.

Any suggestions on what I can use to make that happen?

 

[DelJo63]

I use Allway Sync n Go.

Mac connects to the 2TB backup and there are TWO root dirs; /Mac & /PC

My PC has two primary logins, MacUserID & PCuserID.

MAP \\Mac\Device
* login to PC\MacUserID
* define backup hierarchy (principally the \\Mac\users\MacUserID\Documents)
run the differential backup

*login to PC\PcuserID
* define backup hierarchy \\Pc\Users\SpecificUser\Documents
run the backup.

 

[dylannnnnn]

I use Genie Timeline Free

 

[FNFollies]

What you're looking for is SyncToy. It was developed by a Microsoft employee and is approved and hosted on the microsoft website. Can do multiple types of copy systems to allow duplication, one way syncing, two way syncing, etc. I use it for parity of most of my files. Works great!

 

[trevtech]

I highly recommend Bvckup 2: https://bvckup2.com/. I use it to backup ~2.5 TB of Veeam daily snapshots from my server's internal hard drives to my 2x 4TB mirrored external backup drive. It's best feature is delta copying which only copies the changes that have been made since the last backup to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes for the backup to complete.

I've used SyncToy and SyncBack before, but I still think Bvckup 2 is the best. SyncToy is extremely simplistic and hasn't been updated in years, while SyncBack is overly complicated if all you're doing is backing up in one direction.

Bvckup 2 has a 30 day free trial and SyncBack has a free lite version, so try them both out and see which one you like the best.

 

[wiyosaya]

Free File Sync - https://www.freefilesync.org/ literally free for everyone, but a donator version excludes commercials on setup. Note that there are no commercials in the software itself. Versions are available for multiple OSs. It allows you to schedule jobs with the "scheduler" for any OS, such as cron for Linux, or Task Scheduler for windows. You can set it up to backup only a single specific file in a directory, backup a directory, or backup the entire drive, or any combination of these that your heart desires. It is also easy to use and gives instructions on their web site as to how to setup a scheduled backup.

IMO, it is quite impressive and would easily do what you want.

 

[Kenrick]

Goodsync
From the makers of roboform

http://www.siber.com/consumer/goodsync

Or just buy acronis and do backup instead of syncing. Will save you space and snapshot feature might help you to go back earlier version of your file.

 

[dob_1]

I use a program called ZTREE. It is a windows revamp of an old and extremely powerful DOS file manager. It has many functions but the one you would use is called 'Mirror". It simply mirrors a whole directory/folder tree. It can syncronize them both ways or just replace new / changed files in the target directory/folder tree. It does involve a small amount of manual logging of the disk etc each time, but it's power means this is worth it, and it can do so much more with actions on multiple files on multiple drives at once etc etc.

It is available from www.ztree.com

 

[theruck]

I believe that http://www.secondcopy.com/ is what you are exactly looking for

 

[ypsylon]

I perform daily syncs to my drive pool. Karen's Replicator is all you need without going with pro backup software.

It does exactly what it says on the tin.

 

[h4expo]

I prefer Syncback, it does what you need.

https://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html

 

[SNGX1275]

Thanks for all the replies everyone! I'm trying freefilesync at the moment, the interface seems a bit... I don't know, but its perhaps not as intuitive as I would have hoped. I synced my movies directory and will do others later, it worked fine on movies, just haven't explored the app much. If it turns out it doesn't do what I want I'll try the other suggestions.