Carbonite like solution for local backup.

[Gw2]

Just as the title says I'm looking for a local backup solution that functions like carbonite constantly monitoring files and backing them up whenever possible. Anyone know of such a thing?

 

[Wishmaster]

You can just do disc imaging to a seperate HD, or external.

Acronis has a Non-Stop backup that backs up any changes every 5 minutes.
Im not sure this is really needed however.

It can also have schedules set to back up the entire drive, or single folder however often you want it done.
Daily, Weekly, twice a day, every hour .. whatever.

You can set it to even make a complete backup of the entire HD every 2 days for example.
As well as , every 2 hours back up say ... "My Documents" or My Pictures" .



Acronis is however a paid program.

Theres also Macrium Reflect which is free that can make System Images.

 

[Gw2]

What I don't want is system image backup, just files. Can Acronis do that? and can I open the image it makes to get specific files I want without restoring the whole thing?

 

[Wishmaster]

Yes it can do both. And schedules can be ran on both.


Theres a free trial if you wish to check it out. 30days.
The only restriction is that if you make a recovery CD in trial mode, you can not restore from it. This is only really useful for a full disc/partition restore however. Otherwise, its fully functional.
Since Acronis is a paid program, it may be worth taking for a test drive first. Although, I would highly recommend it.


Also, depending on what type of HD you have, there may be a free version of it. Although the free version is rather limited. It may only be capable of imaging Im not sure right off hand.



You can in fact Schedule and backup just a single folder.
However, even with a Full System Image, you can restore just certain files from it.

Just choose:
"Recover My Discs"
Then select the Image you want.
At this point you'll be offered the option to Recover the Entire Disc, or browse the image to recover just a certain file or folder.
Next, you can manually choose what files folders you want, and whether to recover to a new location, or the original location.


Recovering Files/Folders works the same way only the backup will only contain the DATA you asked it to backup, rather than the Entire HD.

So whether you Image the entire Disc, or just 1 folder, you will have the option to restore everything OR
just a single file (MP3 for example), to its original location or a new one.


Others may have another, possibly free, option to offer.

 

[Gw2]

Actually I've found that crashplan lets me do online and offline backups. Thanks for the help though.