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What Happened to Genie Backup Manager?

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f0dder:
And I haven't found another piece of backup software that runs unobtrusively in the background and does local, versioned, on-modified backups.
-f0dder (August 20, 2012, 01:58 PM)
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what have you tried?-tomos (August 20, 2012, 03:11 PM)
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I've been looking at a fair number of programs during the years, haven't really kept names of most of them. Traditional period-scheduled backup programs (like Genie's backup manager) don't really do it for me. I've been using SpiderOak for several years, but since it only does cloud, it's only usable for backing up the most important core files (bandwidth as well as storage capacity). Also, it's user interface is horrible.

I would have thought SFFS would be your type of backup programme - have you tried it? Seems to me it does all you want, backups are very accessible.-tomos (August 20, 2012, 03:11 PM)
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I checked it out a while ago, and it wasn't really my cup of tea. It does seem pretty fine for synchronizing, but I'm not sure it fits my backup needs. I've skimmed the bullet points for Syncovery, and it does mention Real-time sync and versioning now, but I still get the feeling that it's not exactly what I want. Guess I should take it for a test drive. Somewhat expensive, but OTOH it can also do a bunch of things Timeline can't... ho humm. It's pretty appealing that you can set up multiple backup jobs and there's S3 integration - I could backup the entire dataset to my fileserver, and then the critical stuff (i.e., the "SpiderOak set") to S3... would have to look closely at their versioning and security, because while SpiderOak has a lot of flaws, that's two things they got right, and the reason I use it at all.

I guess listing what I find Timeline does right would be helpful.

1) real-time monitoring of file changes, instead of scheduled backups. However, it doesn't backup files just as they're changed - it queues up changes and backs up periodically. IMHO this is the best of both worlds - it doesn't need to re-scan the backup set, it knows what to backup because of the monitoring, but you don't waste CPU time, disk I/O, network bandwidth and backup storage by constantly backing up files that are modified often.
2) the background backups run at a priority level where it doesn't put much strain on my computer, but I can hit "backup now" and enable "turbo mode" to get the job done ASAP.
3) it has VSS/Shadow Copy support, so in-use files can be backed up.
4) the versioning system - both that you can set it to auto-purge, but also the scheme (which is similar to rsnapshot and Apple's time machine): keep X copies for the last four hours, a daily set for the past week, and a weekly set for stuff older than that.

I also quite like it's UI, it's simple and uncluttered, and has relevant information readily available (when was the last backup run, when will the next backup run, how many files have been modified since last run).

For "regular people", it's backup source selections ("documents", "pictures", etc.) is cute, but I only really need to specify file paths (which it fortuntaley supports) - the easy source selection isn't something I need in another backup program. And one of the big limitations of Timeline is you can only do one backup set. While I can live with that, it would definitely be nifty to have local as well as cloud backup, as I mentioned above - wouldn't mind running a single backup program.

I've also looked (very little!) at some of the open source offerings, and some of the client/server offerings seemed interesting - but often too much hassle setting up, lacking a bit in the client end, or only offering web-based GUIs. Ho humm.

tomos:
1) real-time monitoring of file changes, instead of scheduled backups. However, it doesn't backup files just as they're changed - it queues up changes and backs up periodically. IMHO this is the best of both worlds - it doesn't need to re-scan the backup set, it knows what to backup because of the monitoring, but you don't waste CPU time, disk I/O, network bandwidth and backup storage by constantly backing up files that are modified often.
2) the background backups run at a priority level where it doesn't put much strain on my computer, but I can hit "backup now" and enable "turbo mode" to get the job done ASAP.
3) it has VSS/Shadow Copy support, so in-use files can be backed up.
4) the versioning system - both that you can set it to auto-purge, but also the scheme (which is similar to rsnapshot and Apple's time machine): keep X copies for the last four hours, a daily set for the past week, and a weekly set for stuff older than that.
-f0dder (August 21, 2012, 07:23 AM)
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I'll compare (to the best of my knowledge) with Syncovery/SFFS

1) "it queues up changes and backs up periodically. IMHO this is the best of both worlds" - it cant compete with that. [/edit] Either it's been updated or I missed this: there is an option when monitoring folders to set a 'minimum pause between actions'. See this dc post [/edit]
OTOH, it's never gotten in my way while working or noticably slowed things down. I did install the related service which, IIRC, is optional.
With Timeline, can you set how often the backups are made, or is there a default (- how often then?)
2) not sure here, all I can say is it hasn't slowed me that I can remember (i.e. if so, not within the last couple of years)
3) the same
4) I like the idea of that scheme. There is the danger that you work intensively on one document and end up with only one backup of it, so I dont use it myself (Filehamster implemented something similar which I disabled).
Re SFFS, it's easiest to just give you a look at versioning tabs:

What Happened to Genie Backup Manager?

What Happened to Genie Backup Manager?

J-Mac:
Tom, can you explain the "synthetic backup" to me? I hadn't created any new profiles since they added that "feature", so I never even looked at it. To be honest I never knew it was there! Tobias doesn’t announce anything when updates are released - you have to discover updates by manually checking. And the Help file doesn’t even contain the word "synthetic" in it.

That's one of two big negatives with SFFS/synco....whatever-the-hell-he-calls-it-now:


* Documentation - or the lack of it, and
* The convoluted, mashed together, UI-less settings dialog, if you can call it a dialog!
In those two areas the program does suck. But it performs so well, at least for the parts of it I have managed to figure out.

Jim

tomos:
^ that seems like a fair summary of SFFS

Tom, can you explain the "synthetic backup" to me?-J-Mac (August 21, 2012, 11:48 AM)
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I took the liberty of moving the answer to the SFFS thread.* I was suprised by some of what I found out about it...


*(I started the SFFS stuff here, but I dont want to take over this thread - I'm never sure what to do in that situation!)

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