incremental-backup 1.3.0

Incremental file backup tool

Incremental Backup Tool

An easy-to-use, no fluff incremental file backup application.

Features

• Efficient backup - copies and stores only changed files.
• Simple backup format - data is stored as plain files, metadata is JSON.
• No configuration - all the tool needs to know is where the data is, and where to put the backups.
• Focus on failure - designed with failure in mind to keep your data intact.
• CLI and API usage

Requirements

• Windows or Linux system
• Python 3.9 or newer

Usage

Create a backup:

python -m incremental_backup backup /path/to/back/up /safe/backup/location

This will back up files from /path/to/back/up into /safe/backup/location.

Run the same command again to do subsequent backups - it's that easy! Backups in /safe/backup/location will be automatically read to determine what needs to be copied.

For details, see docs/BackupUsage.md.

Restore files:

python -m incremental_backup restore /safe/backup/location /restore/to/here

This restores the backed up files from /safe/backup/location into /restore/to/here.

For details, see docs/RestoreUsage.md.

Disclaimer

This application is intended for low-risk personal use. I have genuinely tried to make it as robust as possible, but if you use this software and lose all your data as a result, that's not my responsibility.

Development and Contributing

For details on developing or otherwise contributing to the project, please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Background

Unlike Linux, which has awesome tools like rsync, Windows does not seem to have a good selection of free backup tools. There is the Windows system image backup, but that does full backups only. There is also File History, but that is janky and largely opaque.
Thus, I created this tool, and aimed for it to be as simple, open, and robust as possible.

This project is a successor to my initial attempts at an incremental backup tool for Windows, available here.
Please see docs/ChangesFromOriginal.md for details.
If you have used the original incremental backup tool, please note that this version is NOT backwards compatible with the original.