I have about 200GB of family photos, videos, and personal documents which I want to keep securely backed up. To do this I have a dedicated 1TB drive in the PC which is holding my personal files. This is manually copied weekly using copy and paste onto a secondary drive. The drive is also backed up online using a third party backup service. Firstly, I would like to be able to do it automatically backup from one drive to the other one, without the manual copy and paste method I am currently using. Secondly, I would like to be able to detect changes to my files (corruption, malware, accidental editing or deleting) so that I am not backing up "bad" files. For example, if I were to be hit by ransomware malware, I don't want to backup to corrupt files overwriting the previous good version. Can someone kindly recommend some software for this?
In the past I have used an application from Microsoft called SyncToy 2.1 You can configure 1 or 2 way syncs from the drive to other storage. The only thing you will have a hard time finding is something to detect changes in files for corruption and malware without a paid solution. Veeam offers such a thing in their enterprise level software, but its out of the question for a home user. You could also buy a small 2 bay NAS and run a pair of 2TB drives in a RAID 1. Map the drives to your machine with a different user name or service account to back up and take it offline once its done.
Bvckup2 is elegant, but only has a very crude (at this time anyway) archiving feature to protect you against possible replication/synching of bad DATA. You'd probably be better off with a file synching app that offers archiving so that you can be protected in that manner. Some of them version control your DATA by producing "Incremental" DATA changes when a file changes. In this case of original file remains in tact and changes to that file are actual little DELTA incremental images to the original file.
You might want to try SyncFolders. I use it all the time and find it quite flexible since you can create your own rules. It's portable too, so you can easily test it.
Take a look at SyncBack Free. I was just looking for something that fit your requirements. According to their features list they offer Ransomeware detection.
You could try Alternate File Move It allows you to check before committing anything. This program is freeware/open source. 'A simple program for synchronization (or mirroring) of the content of two folders. To achive this, the amount of necessary file operations is reduced to a minimum. The program offers several options/settings to do this processing like - File comparison by size - File comparison by date (different, older, newer) - File comparison by content - Adding missing files to target folder - Removing files that are not contained in source folder - Include empty folders into synchronization'
I am the author of AJC Sync (see www.ajcsoft.com/file-sync.htm). I am currently adding some ransomware detection into the software. This will look at what percentage of files have changed and also allow you to have control files that should never change. If a possible infection is detected it would then prevent auto backups and warn in a manual backup. I am interested in what people think about this solution. Also if you use AJC Sync with our other product, AJC File Server which you would put on another machine that you do not use for internet etc then your backups would be safer from ransomware if you turn on the archiving on the server. Even if you did backup an infected file you could get the old version back from the archive and the archives should be safe on the server machine if you don't share it on the network, go on the internet or run/open any programs/files on it.
in the past 4-5 years i've been using FreeFileSync (freeware) to backup/synchronize all my files with external drives. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/freefilesync.html
Me too. Some problems with the bundled programs, or PUA/PUC. Windows Defender is quarantining the installer.
^^^im frequently donating the project. Donators can download the ad free version of FreeFileSync. a quotation from FAQs:
It´s not clear to me what is the real cost of this policy of "donations". A $10 donation is valid for less than 3 months. At this rate, one year donation is more than $40.
FreeFileSync 10.0 updates removes ads from installer May 3, 2018 https://www.ghacks.net/2018/05/03/freefilesync-10-0/