Copying to a backup - how to 'mirror' the content?

[ClassicCar]

Good afternoon,

I regularly back-up my PC drives to external SSD's, normally by just copying and pasting.

The issue I face is having deleted and changed some of the files on my PC (which happens regularly), if I simple copy and paste onto the backup it obviously adds the new files to the backup, but it doesn't remove any files - i.e. it is no longer representative of my PC, it's mishmash of historical files that are continually added to.

A way around this is to delete everything off the backup and do a new copy every time I make a backup - but that takes a long time.

Is there any tool which will automatically adjust the backup to my PC contents - i.e. identifying what has changed and what hasn't and moving the files appropriately?

Many thanks.

 

[Rroff]

There is various backup software but simplest way would be to use a command prompt with something like:

robocopy [source] [destination] /E /PURGE /COPY:DAT /R:10 /W:3

or

robocopy c:\temp\source c:\temp\destination /MIR /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT /R:100 /W:3

And replace [source] and [destination] with the relevant paths i.e. c:\ g:\ or whatever.

For an online OS drive copying the whole contents can cause issues unless you use software designed for that.

Make sure you get the source and destination the right way around though or it will purge the wrong files.

EDIT: Probably worth Googling a guide on robocopy

 

[5abr3]

I don't have a suggestion on software to do what you want specifically - but generally being able to walk back to a file (or even a previous version) that you deleted and find in some months that you need is a good thing.

So it might be worth a rethink of what you are trying to achieve and the failure modes you do/don't want to protect against, especially if there's plenty of space on the removable media.

 

[joey1211]

Syncback using the non deletion backup option. It moves and renames any changed files to a subfolder.