Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Hi. All of us knows how important it is to make backups, I've been using the native Windows backup tool, the File History, and its been working like a charm. Today I was curious to see how Windows organized all the backups and file versions so I went into the FileHistory folder into my external drive and noticed that Windows organized the files in a very weird way: Windows replaced their original names with dates, and dates only, and very often there newer versions of the same file in the same folder, all with dates in their filenames.

Of course, on Windows, that is not a problem because we can easily restore the files using the native Windows tool, the problem is if for some reason I dont have access to a Windows computer but need to restore my files, like on Linux or Mac, it will be extremely hard to recover my files because the way Windows organized them in the backup folder. It would be really a pain to restore these files in another system because we had to manually select the newer (or older versions depending on the situation) and guess which file is the correct one, plus the need to rename all of them again. I googled about if there were any software capable of restoring Windows' File History backups, but couldn't find any, and since I have a Mac in my sister's home and couple of Linux systems I work with, I realized that relying on Windows File History, and then manually copying files from these systems to my external drive is impractical.

I know that I could rely on cloud backup, but my internet connection isn't neccessarily the best and would take forever to upload all my files, so that's not an option for me. So I wonder... There is any backup software that works on Windows, Mac and Linux so I can be able to restore or backup files on Windows, Mac and Linux?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I am not aware of any single program that "works" on  ("runs" on) multiple OS platforms like that. But simple copy and paste (drag and drop) does. That's what I use most often. For me, losing years and years of my personal data files would be more tragic than losing my OS and all my installed programs. Rebuilding my computer from scratch would be time consuming, but not hard. But if I lost all my data files, that would be be bad. 

I keep all my data files somewhere under Documents. It is just a simple matter of dragging a copy of my entire Documents folder (and its 127 sub-folders and the 1000s of files within those folders) to a backup drive (or in my case, by networked backup server/NAS down in the basement). I can then access those files from any other system networked on my network. It may not be a very pretty backup solution, but it works. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
Back to top
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

This site uses cookies - We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.