Messages

51

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 01:24 PM »

I'm not sure I understand your question. Like HTML vs plain text vs xyz ? Or how many details should it show (all operations vs summary) ?

-Armando (December 13, 2013, 01:21 PM)

Ah, no. What I can do is have it list all steps, just as it does in the log during the normal run.
Or, I can do something fancier, like display how a file tree of the destination would look after the run.

52

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 12:31 PM »

I am using the current beta and find it very good. I only want copies of files; not compressed files, so I have very easy retrieval. I use 2 type of backup; one is instantaneous to a second hard drive in the PC and second to a USB connected drive. This gives "instant" backup as well as a weekly snapshot.

-Chris (December 11, 2013, 01:51 AM)

Thanks, Chris. Glad to hear this.

The one feature that is missing BUT is promised is some form of version control. This will greatly improve the program for me.

Yep, I want to add it, but I want to do it right and that takes time.

53

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 12:27 PM »

Everything works as expected here. Thanks!

-Armando (December 13, 2013, 12:19 PM)

Awesome. How's your copying and updating speeds? :)

A couple things (haven't got the time to delve into other details yet): :
 
1- When setting the paths in "Backup From" and "Backup To", the browse button picks the last opened path. So if, presumably, the last picked path was for "Backup To", setting up Backup From" for another profile will point to the last "Backup To" path.

Aye, thanks. It is meant to start with an already selected folder or start at My Computer level. I fixed this a couple of days ago (another person noticed it). Some sort of obscure COM hiccup, doesn't happen often, but it always happens against everything that's written in the documentation. Go figure.

(edit) I should get the update out tomorrow or on Sunday.

2- Some kind of "simulated run" option with a log showing what would be done is often useful. Most backup solutions have that feature and I always use it to make sure all is fine. Even if a backup is only a backup, destroying 4TB of data because of a slight mistake could be time consuming.

OK, that's actually very easy to do. There's a formal planning module that compiles a backup plan, so a dry run would be just a matter of dumping that plan without executing it. The question is in which format should it be dumped - any thoughts on this?

54

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: November 18, 2013, 01:57 AM »

In the What to backup dialog, could there be a way to duplicate a rule so it's easier to create multiple similar rules?

-Jibz (November 16, 2013, 03:39 AM)

Noted, let me think about it.

Is there a way to exclude, say, files larger than 10 MB? I can only make rules for name and attributes I think.

No, not at the moment. Is this really needed? I'm guessing this stems from the need to skip over very large files, in which case they can typically be excluded by name, no?

Is there a way to edit the default set of rules? I may have some rules I would like to apply to multiple backups.

I am adding an option to edit backup defaults (i.e. a template for new backups).

Would it be helpful with checkboxes next to the rules so they can be easily turned on/off?

This I will not do. This is mostly static part of the configuration. A vast majority of people will configure it once and never touch it again, meaning that these checkboxes will just simply add noise to the UI and won't benefit that many users. It's a niche feature that optimizes very specific and rare usage scenario and as such I don't think it belongs to the UI.

55

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: November 12, 2013, 04:23 PM »

The Browse window - I hear you and I will be redoing it shortly. Though I am so NOT looking forward to it. But regarding the file dialog - got an example?

-apankrat (November 12, 2013, 07:04 AM)

For instance SourceTree, when I click one of the '...' buttons to select a folder, I get a dialog like the one to select files, but one that lets me select a folder:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Jibz (November 12, 2013, 07:52 AM)

Would you look at that ... apparently it's a standard Windows dialog, just a (much) less popular one.
Here's a code for it just in case if anyone else needs it - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CppShellCommonFileDialog-17b20409

By the way, spot anything familiar? - http://bvckup2.com/wip/#24052013

-apankrat (November 12, 2013, 07:04 AM)

I like your font :-[ .. btw, I notice the bwckup in the header guard -- was the use of double-v a codename for bvckup 2?

I like your font too! :)

bwckup - yeah, it's an internal name. w = v+v = v2. It didn't work as a release name though - I ran a poll on the mailing list and lots of people said it sounded like aww or eww. Though technically either one is unpronounceable ... heh.

56

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: November 12, 2013, 07:04 AM »

Thanks, Jibz.

The installer can be closed with (x) if you don't want to run the program, though I just went by my own experience and assumed that very rarely people would want to install, but not run the app.

App window getting stuck behind others - thanks, fixed.

Missed backups - there's an option for that (sans the "ask" part) - http://bvckup2.com/wip/#04102013

Sunday backups - I would rather not over-complicate the UI to cater to people who can't figure it out just the way you did it. Consider it a natural selection to cut down on the support costs :)

The Browse window - I hear you and I will be redoing it shortly. Though I am so NOT looking forward to it. But regarding the file dialog - got an example?

The Log open/close button - just give it few days. Existing arrangement will grow on you. I had the button initially, because it seemed to make sense, but then realized I never actually used it.

Seconds - If I remove them after 5 minute mark, will that be better? As it is, they will get hidden once it gets over an hour.

--

By the way, spot anything familiar? - http://bvckup2.com/wip/#24052013

57

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 23, 2013, 02:01 AM »

Just to be 100% clear: both create a snapshot, which gets modified as your files gets modified. It doesnt create a new snapshot at each backup. [Just in case the "snapshots" query was also about some form of versioning.]

-tomos (October 22, 2013, 03:30 PM)

That's correct. It does not create new snapshot on every run, it updates the one created on the first run.

58

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 02:36 PM »

Personally I think there is definitely a use case for one-way sync used as backup, and I commend you for sticking to doing one thing really well, instead of adding all the features other backup software has .

-Jibz (October 22, 2013, 02:02 PM)

Commendation well received, thank you :-)

59

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 02:34 PM »

It's a matter of terminology really. To each his own. For example, I disagree that compression is an expected part of backup. Nor do I think that Restore should be a built-in app's function, especially if it"s essentially a thinly veiled basic file copy. I hear you that many people were led to believe that a backup without compression is not a "proper" backup, but that's not a reason enough for me to play along. This tendency to compete on the length of a feature list is very unfortunate.

-apankrat (October 22, 2013, 01:03 PM)

I think this is a trickier topic than it sounds. It chains a bit to your earlier remark about my theme.
"Submit a bug report for an unreleased theme to Microsoft - do I expect them to do anything? No."

-TaoPhoenix (October 22, 2013, 01:31 PM)

Just to close this particular issue - you are using a theme that wasn't released or is supported officially, that causes a common control not to be painted correctly and then somehow it should be me working around this issue in my program. Sorry, this makes little sense. Admittedly, in certain cases devs do work around other people's problems, but these are singular high-impact cases (like having a setup package mis-detected as a trojan by Symantec) and they are rare exceptions.

But for these smaller apps, having the dev put in features feels to me like an important process, because it can change a user's opinion of the developer.

I made a lot of changes in 5 months that the app sat in private beta. But I never add features just because they are easy to do and somebody asked for them. This is a design by a committee and it is a ROAD TO HELL. Retaining app's focus is really hard and it involves both (a) knowing what it is and (b) saying No on a regular basis.

60

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 02:24 PM »

@apankrat: the logs look so nice and easy compared to your average log :-*

-tomos (October 22, 2013, 01:24 PM)

I agree :-)

Query (similar to one in previous post) -
does it do versioning? (with apologies if stated above - have been following the events, but not very closely...)

It doesn't do versioning, but here are my thoughts on this.

I firmly believe that versioning needs to be done in a way that doesn't lock file history to specific software. This means that the version archive format needs to be open and documented. This in turn means that I should either invent and document such format (but then someone else will need to code alternative tools to work with it) -or- I can adopt an existing format.

Can you guess where this is going? ... 3,2,1 ... That's right - it should use Git :-)

So the plan as it stands is to get the V2 on the road first and then to tackle file versioning.

61

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 02:17 PM »

You misunderstand what the delta copying is and I guess the explanation I have in the Backup Config window should be reworded -
 (see attachment in previous post)
Delta copying doesn't copy deltas and store them in a separate file. It copies them into the existing backup copy. Think of it as a selective, per-block update of the backup copy. Performance-wise it makes no difference on the first run, but on the second run in vast majority of cases it delivers significant speed up (over copying file in its entirety).

-apankrat (October 22, 2013, 11:50 AM)

I'm not so sure that I am. Copy Files In Full creates "snapshots" in a point in time, right?

-TaoPhoenix (October 22, 2013, 01:19 PM)

Correct, but so does the delta copying.

Say you have C:\Temp\file.ext and you set it to be backed up to X:\Backup.
You run the backup first time, it creates X:\Backup\file.ext. An exact copy.

Then you go and edit C:\Temp\file.ext, change something in it.
You run the backup second time. It updates X:\Backup\file.ext and again it becomes an exact copy of C:\Temp\file.ext.

This happens regardless of whether you are using the full or the delta copier. The "full/delta" differences affects *how* the file is updated, but the net effect is the same - the backup copy becomes an exact replica of the original. Think of it as a performance optimization that allows the backup complete faster, but doesn't affect what's actually being done to the backup.

Does this make sense?

62

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 01:03 PM »

I seem to remember we've discussed the name before -- I think "backup" gives people some associations about features like restore, compression, etc. As I understand it, what Bvckup does is one-way sync, which can be used for simple backups.

-Jibz (October 22, 2013, 12:27 PM)

It's a matter of terminology really. To each his own. For example, I disagree that compression is an expected part of backup. Nor do I think that Restore should be a built-in app's function, especially if it"s essentially a thinly veiled basic file copy. I hear you that many people were led to believe that a backup without compression is not a "proper" backup, but that's not a reason enough for me to play along. This tendency to compete on the length of a feature list is very unfortunate.

In information technology, a backup, or the process of backing up, refers to the copying and archiving of computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.

That's from Wikipedia too. If a program creates an archive copy of a file, primarily to protect against the data loss, it's a backup. It's really quite simple.

But that aside - have you tried the program? What do you think?

63

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 11:50 AM »

Notice on the last one I found a bug - changing the size of the window around seems to allow the background to "bleed through".

-TaoPhoenix (October 22, 2013, 11:27 AM)

You most certainly want to log a bug report with whoever made the themeing software that you are using. This is a bog standard Windows scrollbar that is not getting painted through. I just have *zero* control over this.

Ad because I selected "full copies not deltas", here is an example that the files came over.

You misunderstand what the delta copying is and I guess the explanation I have in the Backup Config window should be reworded -



Delta copying doesn't copy deltas and store them in a separate file. It copies them into the existing backup copy. Think of it as a selective, per-block update of the backup copy. Performance-wise it makes no difference on the first run, but on the second run in vast majority of cases it delivers significant speed up (over copying file in its entirety).

And I am done!

And Thanks! :)

Question for the dev - how do I make a backup of my *entire* c drive? Theoretically if I have a bit perfect backup of the entire C drive, and it tanks, I could just have a comp tech "rename" my "D Drive" into "C", copy over from "Backup Oct22" into "C:" and I could resume using my computer, right? Please advise because I think I want to do that fairly soon.

Bvckup is not a system backup, it's a data backup. The principal difference is that it is not aware of things like bootable sector, MBR and other file system elements that are not files, but that are required for a successful OS boot-up. So while you can backup entire C:\, it will not give you a bootable image.

Basically the use-case for Bvckup is that of backing up your precious data, but not the program files or drivers or DLLs. Then, if the source collapses, you'd reinstall the OS and all the apps and then restore app's data from the backup created with Bvckup.

Also please advise how I would do some kind of process like "re-install Windows", then "dump bit perfect backup on top of it" and maybe have a "brand new computer"! In other words, if the D drive is "brand new" (basically had only like 1000 transactions performed on it max as opposed for ex billions on C drive), a Fresh OS, (And I'm seriously thinking of going Win7 if my box can handle it and I think it can), then I win! Right? Stop me if I made a horrible blunder!

See above.

But the backup needs to be "auto-zipped" or whatever so that it's smaller than the regular data!

Just direct backup to a compressed NTFS folder. This gives you a ZIP-level compression rate and absolutely transparently.

So overall I like this program!

Thanks, glad to hear that!

64

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 09:56 AM »

"Initial Use"
- The opening "Nothing happened yet" screen

-TaoPhoenix (October 22, 2013, 09:32 AM)

The white background on menu items - is it yours or is it mine? I.e. is this a part of the theme you are using?

-apankrat (October 22, 2013, 09:37 AM)

Yours. No other app I have defaults to a fixed color under-menu background.

-TaoPhoenix (October 22, 2013, 09:50 AM)

Weird, I'll have a look, but the menu isn't custom-drawn in any way. Might be a bug in your skinning app or the theme.

Also the menus are "soft rollup"

I don't know what this means :-/

Help/Support ... does ... nothing!

Ok, will look at this too. It merely calls ShellExecute with "mailto:[email protected]".

65

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 09:37 AM »

"Initial Use"
- The opening "Nothing happened yet" screen

-TaoPhoenix (October 22, 2013, 09:32 AM)

The white background on menu items - is it yours or is it mine? I.e. is this a part of the theme you are using?

66

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 09:18 AM »

Bring it on :)

67

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: October 22, 2013, 08:01 AM »

Hi guys,

I'd like to announce that my long-running backup project is finally feature-complete and available for public testing!

Check it out here - http://bvckup2.com - or read on for the summary and what's new in the v2.

--

Here's a couple of screenshots just to spruce up the thread, but go and see the website, there's plenty more.



Main window (with log panel hidden)



Backup config

--

As you may or may not know, original Bvckup was a simple directory cloning tool that I wrote for my own use back in 2009. What made it unique is its use of delta copying (whereby it would only copy modified parts of every file after the initial copy) and its real-time (continuous) backup mode. I put it out on the Internets just for fun and almost forgot about it as it was after all just a pet project. Then a year after I looked at some stats and there's nearly 1000 people of the mailing list and I was all o_O, hmm, interesting.

So I posted it on DC (here), Jesse reblogged it, Stephen reviewed it and I got a lot of useful feedback to mull over.

Long story short, last October I finally bit the bullet, sat down and started working on the Version 2 nearly full-time. It was a complete rewrite and it took about 8 months to get to the first shippable beta. That was in May 2013. Then it stayed in private testing with about 100 people for 5 months and eventually got ready for the open beta. Ta-da!

Short diff against the v1 is as follows:

•    A complete rewrite
•    Native 64 bit support
•    Faster and more robust delta copying
•    Excellent user interface - not to pat myself on a back, but it is really good
•    Major performance improvements across the board
•    Removable device tracking
•    Move / rename detection
•    Run-as-a-service support

•    Full year of full-time development
•    5 months in private testing with 100 people
•    Stable, robust and of a production quality

•    About 140,000 lines of C and C++ code
•    No dependencies on any 3rd party frameworks or libraries, only native Windows APIs
•    Executable file weighing in a shy under 600KB
•    Idle RAM usage - under 5 Megs

Having previously wrote firmware for firewalls and routers, I have a sticky preference for efficient and highly optimized code. I also happen to get a strong kick out of messing with pixels and so this puts me in an interesting position when I can comfortably wear several hats at once. Bvckup 2 is essentially of show case of that :)

Have a look, give it a try and let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Alex

68

General Software Discussion / Re: Entirely unsure about a simple discussion forum

« on: September 07, 2013, 10:21 AM »

As far as simple forums go, http://pivory.com is the one for me. It also has a stripped-down DYI edition - https://github.com/c...hirecats/CuriousWall - I've adapted it to one of my projects and it is very simple to hack on (once you de-spaghetti his code a little).

Alternatively, there's http://www.mwforum.org and http://newsboard.unclassified.de

69

Living Room / Re: My Gadget Idea: "Timestamper Disc"

« on: August 20, 2013, 01:56 PM »

@mouser - you were trolling all along then, weren't you?

70

Living Room / Re: My Gadget Idea: "Timestamper Disc"

« on: August 20, 2013, 02:38 AM »

No, gents, this ideally should be an always-on display, like a piece of paper with scribblings would be.
So it needs to be e-ink based.

71

Living Room / Re: My Gadget Idea: "Timestamper Disc"

« on: August 19, 2013, 07:12 AM »

I can see this being pretty useful.

Needs to be very thin, almost film-like and allow for a bit of bending. If it could cling both magnetically and with static, it'd be the best. Needs to be washable. Just think - peeling it off a container of leftover pasta *after* taking said container out of dishwasher

NFC is nice and so is extended single-button interface (with long-presses, multi-taps and Morse code text entry), but I'd say these are secondary to the hardware hotness. For every thick extended version I bet you could sell a dozen of simpler thin ones.

2c

72

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2

« on: June 07, 2013, 03:37 PM »

It's in closed beta at the moment. PM me if you want in. If not, it should hit public beta in a couple of weeks.

73

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2

« on: May 24, 2013, 02:26 PM »

This DNF of backup software is going beta next week.

I thought I'd let you guys know as I would love a good teardown :)

Some work-in-progress screenshots and whatnots are over at http://bvckup2.com/wip

74

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2

« on: January 29, 2013, 01:46 PM »

Btw, "Cache-aware reading" - are there actually any APIs or IOCTLs you can use to determine whether a file is cached? Or are you simply using FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING all the time? smiley

-f0dder

Let me push the beta out first, I will elaborate then. It's a bit more complicated that FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING, but there are not IOCTLs involved. If you think about it, you should be able to figure it out

Iirc I did the test with the version supporting this switch, but since it wasn't documented I didn't think to include it - what's it do?

-f0dder

I should've updated the post with -? dump, shouldn't I?

[Select]

Syntax: bvckup2-demo2.exe [-t <threads>] [-v | -q] location-to-scan

  -t   number of threads to use
  -v   verbose, dump API timing profile
  -q   quiet, print only final timing

  --breadth-first    scan siblings then children
  --no-large-fetch   do NOT use FindExLargeFetch
  --no-info-basic    do NOT use FindExInfoBasic, use FindExInfoStandard instead

  Thread count defaults to the number of CPU cores if not specified.

The default is to scan depth first (children, then siblings), use FIND_FIRST_EX_LARGE_FETCH and ask only for FindExInfoBasic. The last three keys on the command-line list allow overriding these.

Based on my experiments the fastest way to scan a warm cache is to first scan the location with FindExInfoStandard and then scan with FindExInfoBasic, without LargeFetch and depth first. In my case, it cut down the scanning time from ~1000 ms to ~ 700 ms, which is significant. But that's just for the warm cache. For the cold cache the above defaults appear to be the best.

75

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2

« on: January 29, 2013, 01:39 PM »

very nice

-tomos (January 28, 2013, 06:27 AM)

Thanks.