Cobian Backup

Free backup software for Microsoft Windows featuring compression, encryption and automatic incremental archiving. Backups can be saved to CD, DVD, USB memory stick, a second hard drive (internal or external), etc. It supports long file names (32,000 characters) for all backup routines.

"Cobian Backup is not an usual backup application: it only copies your files and folders in original or compressed mode to other destination, creating a security copy as a result. So Cobian Backup can be better described as a "Scheduler for security copies". Cobian Backup supports several methods of compression and strong encryption. "

Usage

To create a new backup, we need to create a new backup task that will allow us to configure what files are being backed up and various configuration settings. Choose + to create a new task. Give it a name. Click on the Archive option in the left hand menu of the New Task dialog as shown in the image below. Choose 7zip and compress files individually.

Backup Types: Full, Incremental, Differential, Dummy

Cobian Backup uses the archive bit of the attributes to check if the file has been changed or not. Sometimes the program fails to change the attribute and the file will be copied again next time even if it is not necessary. The archive attribute operation can fail for example if your source is in a Linux or other system that have different attribute formats or if the engine doesn't have permission to change the attribute.

Incremental

The backup software creates copies of all the files, or parts of files that have changed since previous backups of any type (full, differential or incremental).

An incremental backup includes only those things that have changed since the last backup, and saves those things into a separate, additional, backup file or location.

All the incremental backups must be available to perform the restore.

For example if you did a full backup on Sunday. An incremental backup made on Monday, would only contain files changed since Sunday, and an incremental backup on Tuesday, would only contain files changed since Monday, and so on.

Restoring from incremental backups is the slowest because it may require several sets of data to fully restore all the data. For example if you had a full backup and six incremental backups. To restore the data would require you to process the full backup and all six incremental backups.

This is the feature you will most likely be using after creating your first backup instance. It checks if the source has changed from the last backup and only will backup those files that are new or have changed since the last backup. This saves a lot of time and space on your PC or the medium you will store your backup upon.

Differential

The backup software looks at which files have changed since you last did a full backup. Then creates copies of all the files that are different from the ones in the full backup. Rather than backing up only the changes from the previous backup, each differential backup includes all the changes from the baseline full backup. So day 2’s backup would include changes from day 1 to day 2. Day 3’s backup would include changes from day 1 to day 3.

If you do a differential backup more than once, it will copy all the files, or parts of files that have changed since the last full backup, even if you already have identical copies of those files in a previous differential backup.

For restoring all the data, you will only need the the last full backup, and the last differential backup.

Faster to create than a full backup.

Restoration is faster than using incremental backup.

Not as much storage needed as in a full backup. Restoration is slower than using a full backup.

Creating a differential backup is slower than creating an incremental backup.

This setting works in the same way as incremental but instead compares the files from the last Full backup. If the current files are different compared to the last Full backup it will back up that file.

Compression

• Task -> Edit Task -> Archive

Choose "7zip" for compression type. You should also select the option labeled Compress individually, which will compress each file individual rather than making one large compressed backup. This makes it easier to restore individual files as needed.