Tutorial Thursday
The biggest reasons that I hear as to why people don’t perform backups is that they are either too lazy to set them up, or there just isn’t a good time to schedule them. The later excuse is often because they don’t want to “waste” their computer’s processing power and memory performing a backup when they are actually trying to use their computer. Sure they could leave it on overnight, but that just seems silly to leave a computer on for an extra 8 hours when all you need is 20 or 30 minutes to perform an incremental backup.
If you use one of those two excuses I’m hoping that the free Windows application I’m going to show you today will solve both of them. The solution is called IdleBackup, and as the name implies it can be used to backup important files and folders on your computer. The thing that really makes this unique is that it will check to see if the computer has been idle for at least one minute before performing a backup.
Once you get IdleBackup installed on your computer you’ll be presented with a window that looks like this:
(Click to Enlarge)
As you can see it is a pretty simple program without an over abundant amount of things to confuse you. All you have to do is check the box(es) corresponding to the areas on your computer that you want to backup. Each folder that you designate will be listed below the selection area for easy viewing.
The next thing that you’ll want to configure is the destination location for the backup files. This can be a location on the current hard drive, an external drive (memory card, USB drive, etc…), or another computer on the network:
And lastly you’ll want to set how often the files should be backed up. Check the Automatic on box if you want IdleBackup to stay on a set interval, otherwise backups will only be performed when you manually start them. If you do decide to enable the automatic backups you’ll want to specify how often the program should check to see whether the files have changed or not.
Backups, unless manually started, will only begin once the computer is idle for one minute regardless of whether the timer has hit the magic number you specified. That means if you schedule a backup for every 15 minutes, but use your computer for four straight hours the backup won’t begin until after you’ve finished.
The countdown area will show how long you have to wait before another backup is performed, but if you see it “stuck” on 60 seconds (like in the screenshot to the right) it’s because the computer is not idle. Once there is no activity on the machine the countdown will wait 60 seconds to ensure that the computer is idle, and then it will begin the backup process.
By default the IdleBackup will check keyboard/mouse usage and CPU activity to determine whether the computer is idle. I’m not sure how low the CPU usage needs to get before being considered “idle,” but if you find that backups are never being performed it might be good to disable the Cpu activity check feature.
There are some things that would be nice to configure, such as the amount of time the PC has to be idle before initializing a backup. However, that is a tradeoff you have to make for getting an application that is extremely simple to use.
Note: The first time that you run a backup it may take awhile depending on how many things need to be transferred. After that it will only copy changed files, and will never delete a file from the destination even if it is deleted from the source.
Just what I’ve been looking for..okay may be not yet. Once I get my additional drives setup I am going to want to use one for back-ups. So this should work well.
Seems perfect to me, but does it support Unicode file names?
Sounds like a good resource for local backups.
While using an usb drive does allow for off site backups, you still have the concern that an event that effects your hard drive will also effect your back up. To overcome this concern, I have been using [mozy.com] for several years.
While their basic service is limited in storage capacity, unlimited space is relatively cheap. Your data is encrypted and you have complete control over what gets backed up, when it gets backed up and how. It is possible to have a continual system idle backup going or in my case do a three am backup. Versions are also stored and recovery is easy through a couple of different mechanisms. I say [mozy.com.]
I prefer make backup at shutdown, when I leave, rather than on idle.
[download.com]
What advantages does this offer over the Windows backup utility? I’ve never used Windows backup but it does offer similar features like backup when idle and stuff like incremental backups, etc.
I’m actually not sure about that.
Ouch, that is a rather expensive application.
I haven’t experimented with with the Backup and Restore Center very much so I can’t really say what the difference is. That feature is only in Vista though, and so users of other versions of Windows will not have access to it. And in Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Basic you’re limited to what you can backup.
I haven’t jumped to Vista yet, I still use Windows XP Professional and there is a backup utility available.
If you go to the Control Panel and select Performance and Maintenance there is an option called Backup your data. I tested it out earlier and it did a backup whilst the machine was idle.
Not sure if this is available on other versions of Windows but another option for people to consider, although the user interface is not as nice as IdleBackup.
Some comments from author of idlebackup:
Unicode, don’t know, check it out
The latest version is 1.11 which support making a manual backup and shutdown the computer.
Idletime is adjustable in idelbackup.ini file for advanced users
More comments welcome, greetings
Huh, I don’t know if I ever realized that was available in XP. I vaguely remember some sort of backup utility, but I didn’t think it was anything that could be scheduled or done when your computer was idle. I’ll have to check that out.
Okay, got my other drive setup now. Downloaded this and selected the files I want to have backed up, now we shall see how it goes.
Had to uninstall the application today. Last night it tried to run when the system was not idle and I ended up getting several Access Violations. Today after a reboot it ’stopped responding’ when it started-up.
Huh, that’s interesting. The CyberNotes being posted tomorrow might be a better solution for you if you’re having troubles with it.
Looks like a cool software. I don’t mind the computer works more than me when I am lazyly sitting on my couch.
There is a new version 1.14d summary of features:
Easy to use backup and restore program can make a backup during idle time of the computer. Also suited for for non-advanced users.
Selection of directories and or files by clicking in an explorer like tree. When started manually optionally you can select to shutdown the computer afterwards. The backup medium to be used is: harddisk/usb-stick/usb-drive or network.
There is an option to synchronize the backup (cleanup unused files).
This is a Freeware program with no restrictions, nagware or spyware.