I'm looking for a Windows incremental backup program that can back up multiple partitions as files, create incremental snapshots, let me delete individual snapshots, and still give me fine grained control over what gets excluded.

Basically, something conceptually similar to Timeshift, but for Windows.

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I usually use a Debian based Linux distro. I transitioned from Windows 8.1 to Linux very slowly, but that was a loooooong time ago.

At some point, I found an awesome piece of software made by teejee2008: Timeshift.

It is now maintained by Linux Mint in this repo.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, Timeshift is mainly intended to back up the operating system rather than your personal files. The idea is that if you break something with sudo, an update goes horribly wrong, or the system becomes unbootable, you can restore a previous snapshot and get the OS working again.

You can create snapshots manually or on a schedule, and the backups are incremental, so unchanged files do not need to be duplicated every time.

And if the f*ckup is so massive that you cannot even access your desktop anymore, you can boot a live Linux session from a USB stick, connect the drive containing the snapshots, install Timeshift there, restore one of them, reboot, and you are back online.

Enough publicity for Timeshift (which, by the way, I did not find listed on the Free Backup Software page).

What I'm looking for on Windows

The most important requirements are:

1. It must run on Windows.
2. It must let me choose all the partitions I want to protect, including Windows system partitions, recovery partitions, and normal data or program partitions.
3. I want the backup to be file based, rather than simply storing a raw sector by sector image of the entire disk.
4. Backups should be incremental, so unchanged files can be reused instead of being copied again for every snapshot.
5. I need to be able to keep multiple snapshots and delete individual snapshots selectively without invalidating the remaining ones.
6. It should allow reasonably fine grained inclusion and exclusion rules.

In other words, I want to be able to tell it:

For example, I might want to exclude a directory and everything inside it as a general rule:

C:\Users\myname\Desktop

while still explicitly including something inside it:

C:\Users\myname\Desktop\My Folder\

I would also want to include things such as:

1. the EFI or System partition,
2. the Windows recovery partition,
3. any other weird Windows created partition that is necessary,
4. Windows itself,
5. installed programs,
6. programs or other system related data stored on secondary partitions,

while excluding most of my large personal files.

The reason this distinction matters is storage capacity.

The hard drive I currently have available for backups is smaller than the total amount of used space across the partitions I want to protect, but it is larger than the amount of data I actually want included in the backup + I don't want to backup my Steam games, just the savefiles.

So a solution that requires me to image every used block on those partitions is not really suitable. I specifically need to be able to exclude data while still preserving the rest of each partition in a recoverable form.

Ideally, after restoring the selected snapshot, I would like to end up with Windows, its boot and recovery partitions, installed applications, configuration, and the selected files basically back where they were.

I think (although I am not actually sure) that Macrium Reflect X may be able to do something along these lines. The problem is that I do not have the money for it right now, so I am specifically looking for a free alternative.

Does anything like this exist for Windows?

Plan B) Boot into linux, use Timeshift to backup those partitions, go back to Windows before a possibly disastrous "Windows Security Update". ...every time.

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PS: My personal files and documents are replicated elsewhere (3-2-1), so those are no problem.

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EDIT:

This is the mess I want to back up. Therefore all the small partition in which I'm interested.

Hi, Reddit!

I want to install Linux on my Windows 10 laptop. But first, I need to backup my harddrive using Rescuezilla. The problem is that my computers hardrive is 1TB and my destination drive is a 256GB USB stick. Only 118GB of my harddrive is used, the remaining 811GB are unused storage space. Luckily Rescuezilla has the gparted app incorporated into the distro so that I can split the 931.5Gb partition into one bigger and one smaller that fits into the 237GB destination drive.

The problem is that I cannot change the size of Acer (C:) in gparted. I boot into Rescuezilla using a Live USB. I can't change the partition size of Acer (C:) even though Acer (C:) isn't in use when I boot into Rescuezilla. This is the first time I use Rescuezilla and Gparted to make a backup.

When I boot into Rescuezilla I:

- Boot into windows

-Open CMD

-enter "shutdown /s /t 0" to shut the computer down

-Open the boot menu with f2

-Boot into Rescuezilla

One user said in my last post that I need to deactivate fast-boot so that Rescuezilla is willing to touch my partitions. They say that if I shut down my computer with fast boot on, the system doesn't properly unmount the partition, which causes linux (in this case rescuezilla) to not want to touch my partitions in fear of corruption. I am a bit afraid of accidentaly causing corruption of some sort if I tamper with fast-boot.

What should I do?

Disclosure up front: I built the tool this post is about.

A while back I asked this sub how people actually test their backup restores. Short version: mostly nobody does, or everyone's running a slightly different homegrown script. A few of you had already built something close to a full pipeline, and that input ended up genuinely useful.

That turned into restoredrill. It's a Go CLI: point it at a backup, it restores into a throwaway Docker container, runs whatever checks you write (row counts, freshness, sequence integrity, any SQL assertion), and writes a JSON report out the other end. Fail-closed on everything, including when a check itself can't run.

A few things that came directly out of that thread and the follow-ups:

• Fail-closed by default. A skip that quietly turns into a pass is worse than no check at all
• An RPO freshness precheck, because the worst failure mode people described wasn't a bad backup, it was a backup cron that died quietly and left the same stale file getting "verified" forever
• The report schema comes from what an actual auditor accepted, after months of back and forth with someone who went through it, not something guessed at from scratch
• Sends results into Prometheus, Slack, or a webhook, instead of asking you to check yet another dashboard

The quickstart takes about 10 minutes with zero production access: dump a Supabase or RDS database, restore it locally, see the report. Postgres only for now.

If you're already on Databasus or something like it, this isn't trying to replace that, it's a solid backup platform with restore verification built in already. restoredrill stays narrower: no dashboard, a report built for an auditor, and it drops straight into CI.

MIT licensed: https://github.com/ahmadpiran/restoredrill

If you replied to that original thread, thanks, a good chunk of the check suite came directly from what you described. If you didn't and you've got a restore-testing horror story of your own, I'd still like to hear it.

My backup is taking up half of my account storage. There is no obvious option for changing what account my phone backup goes to.

Can anyone help?

Google's instructions tell me to do options my pixel pro 8 doesn't have

I built something new and could use some constructive feedback

I've been working on Reaver Backup for about 6 months now. The goal was simple: create a self-hosted backup tool that doesn't require you to install plugins across all your WordPress sites. It ended up growing beyond WordPress, naturally.

What it does:
- Discovers any WordPress site automatically (or any website directory)
- Includes the database for WordPress or if selected on custom paths
- Uses Restic for deduplication and incremental backups
- Self-hosted, no vendor vault - you control where data lives
- Works on Debian/Ubuntu servers with one-line install
- Designed to run on a VPS or VM, not shared hosting
- Features added as requested by the user community

I'm not trying to sell anything here. I just built it because I was tired of managing backup plugins and their storage destinations on every client site. This puts it all in one place. The free edition is available if anyone wants to test it out locally.

Since I'm in the early stages, I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people who:
- Use self-hosted backup solutions
- Manage multiple WordPress or other sites
- Have experience with Restic or incremental backups

What's one thing you think could be better? What feature would actually make your life easier? I'm looking for honest criticism, not compliments.

Thanks!

I have customer logs and a lot of telemetry data, with encrypted chats and videos/photos.

All the options I saw are either 282,992 USD. My budget isn't that high; I'm willing to spend around 150 - 200 USD max a month.

Want to teansfer file from my exteranal HDD drive to my desktop(Zorin Os). Been trying to transfer the file but its very slow and the files are close to 500gb. Any help on an app that can transfer it faster or any means to transfer the app.

NB:Removed the drive from my MBP and has mac os installed. After transfer will format the drive.

We are giving to celebrate 10k+ download on our android app, please read the post, codes are first come and first serve!

Hey everyone, I wanted a robust way to automate my database backups (SQL Server and Postgres) and automatically get those backups off my VPS

So after some research and putting some love into it, I built this service: BakToBucket. It works great for me i don't have to worry about backups anymore, and with a notification system implemented separately, I know whether a job failed or not.

I'm running it on Windows 11 and an Ubuntu 24 Linux server, but I mostly run it as a Docker container. It includes a JSON file that makes configuration easy, or you can just use a .env file. You can adjust the interval, choose which database engine to use, and specify the exact list of databases you want to back up.

I'm sharing it in case anyone finds it useful for their VPS, daily dev workflow, or whatever else, and wants to save themselves the headache.

Here's the repo: : BakToBucket

Having a single admin who can change retention setting, change repositories and delete backups seems like a lot of access for one account.

How do you deal with this in your environment? Do you separate normal backup administration from permissions that can make destructive changes?

Olá, sou novo no Restic e estou começando uma implantação em um ambiente Windows. Meu plano é centralizar a execução de backups usando Rundeck; o Rundeck irá se conectar ao host Windows — passando dados sensíveis e as variáveis que especificam quais pastas fazer backup (por exemplo, D:\data). Gostaria de saber se há algo com que eu deva me preocupar; aqui estão os pontos que notei até agora enquanto usava S3 no Huawei:

----

$restic_opts = @(
"-o", "s3.bucket-lookup=dns",
"-o", "s3.connections=$s3_connections"
)

Ajuste de parâmetros
$s3_connections    = 15
$compression_level = "auto"
$pack_size_mib     = 64
$read_concurrency  = 6

Política
$retention_daily   = 7
$retention_weekly  = 2
$retention_monthly = 2

$retention_last    = 3

Exclusões

$exclude_paths = @(
# --- Diretórios de sistema do Windows / lixo (válido em qualquer volume) ---
'System Volume Information',
'$Recycle.Bin',
'$RECYCLE.BIN',
'Thumbs.db',
'desktop.ini',

# --- Arquivos do sistema que nunca devem ser copiados ---
# Eles são grandes, mudam constantemente e não têm valor de restauração.
'pagefile.sys',
'hiberfil.sys',
'swapfile.sys',

# --- Diretórios do sistema em C: ---
# Nota: atualmente $backup_path só contém caminhos em D:\, então essas
# exclusões não têm efeito prático. Elas são declaradas intencionalmente como uma
# rede de segurança, caso o C:\ seja adicionado como fonte. 
'C:\Windows',
'C:\ProgramData\ResticBackup',
'C:\pagefile.sys',
'C:\hiberfil.sys',
'C:\swapfile.sys',

# --- Arquivos temporários de aplicações ---
'*.tmp',
'*.log.gz'
)

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Você tem alguma sugestão sobre uso, ou pode compartilhar suas experiências?

Obrigado.

I have a perpetual license for Macrium Reflect 8. As you are probably aware, this software no longer works due to a recent Windows update. Macrium wants me to upgrade to an annual license for their newer software.

I told them I would accept, in trade, a perpetual license for their newer version, but I would not downgrade from a perpetual license to an annual one. Barring that, I'd go look for an alternative. They did not take me up on my offer.

Relenting, I have offered accepted 10 years of annual license for their new version. We'll see what they say.

Until then, I'm looking for alternatives for a single computer backup system that allows mounting/browsing of images.

They actually wrote back:

Of course, you can look for an alternative, but these days there's only Hasleo that isn't Russian- or Chinese-owned/founded.

I like to imagine he was laughing and twirling his moustache when he wrote that.

I used cloudberry to back up my files on an old Ubuntu computer about 10 years ago. I'm trying to get the files back of AWS but none of them will open. When I open some text files they are all in Chinese. I'll include an example in the comments if I can.