QuickShadow Backup is a backup program for Windows PCs. It will backup files from your PC hard drive to an external drive (NAS or USB).
It will:
- Copy files that change on your PC to the external disk, as soon as possible after the change is detected.
QuickShadow Backup watches your PC and copies files away to the backup whenever they change.
- Allow ANYTHING to get files back from the backup
The backup copies are plain files. You don’t need special programs, tools, or magic incantations to get stuff back from your backup. Just copy the file.
- Do a really easy Synchronise.
A sychronise checks my PC hard drive against the external NAS or USB drive, and copies over any differences it finds. A sychronise can be automatic (every time I start the program), or manually kicked off. And it can be stopped at any time. A synchronise only copies files that are newer on my PC. I can synchronise my PC with about 140,000 files in about 4 minutes. Synchronise check speed is not affected by how big the files are – of course, if there are a lot of files to copy that might take a while.
- Juggle its internal priorities so that it does not make your PC run slow.
QuickShadow Backup aggressively runs in the background so that it is unobtrusive.
- Be easy to set up.
There are only a few options, and they are all easy to explain and understand. If stuck, there is on-line help.
- Make the selection of files to copy easy.
Unlike other programs which want you to select from a tree view showing the disk structure (which gets impossible when you have a hundred thousand files or more), QuickShadow Backup lets you enter from one to perhaps a few backup locations, and uses exclusion patterns to ignore the files you don’t want copied.
- Ignore all the rubbish.
Junk like internet browser cookies and cache files – there is no point copying it because it changes all the time, and is automatically deleted by browsers anyhow. QuickShadow Backup comes pre-set with a list of exclusion patterns for Internet Explorer, FireFox, Google Chrome, and Google Desktop. If they are not quite right, you can easily add your own patterns.
- Tell me what is going on (but only when I want it).
I want progress bars to see how copying of big files is going, and I want to see if there are a bunch of files waiting to be copied. QuickShadow Backup can process hundreds of thousands of files, and always shows the processing in blocks of 5000. That’s usually enough for anybody. And when I don’t want to see this, then it gets out of the way.
- Give logging.
You can log nothing, errors, or absolutely everything. You can clear the log at any time, even if a big update or synchronise operations is running. And you can view the log at any time as well, even while the program is running.
- Be small and unobtrusive.
QuickShadow Backup can minimise or go to the system tray so it is out of the way until you want it.
- Copy system and hidden files, and propagate file renames.
QuickShadow Backup can, as an option, copy system and hidden files. When files are deleted on the PC, the corresponding copy of the file can optionally be deleted (or preserved). And when files are renamed on the PC, the copy will be renamed as well.