hunterbeanland / autover

Configurable automatic or real time backup and personal versioning system

AutoVer is a configurable automatic or real time backup and personal versioning system. It can be used as a simple real time backup or as a more complex, but transparent version control system (like a realtime incremental backup). The beauty of this system is that once you set it up (which is extremely simple) it does everything. No remembering to backup or to check in or check out files. Every time you save a file it is copied to your backup folder, drive or FTP server. You can include and exclude certain files and browse the backups with the Backup Explorer. It also runs as an icon in your system tray or via a Windows service.

Great for backing up (or one way synchronising) your work or home documents to flash memory or saving every change you make to your source code or image files.

Main Webiste:
http://beanland.net.au/autover/

Features

• Select any number of separate folders or folder trees (including sub folders) to watch for changes - each folder tree has its own independent settings
• Select straight backup or one of two versioning modes
• Select any folder, drive or FTP to backup to (including memory sticks and network drives)
• Option to create an initial backup before the automatic backup starts and ensure it is current on every startup
• Backups can be checked automatically, at a set time or manually
• Restrict which files and folders to include and exclude (by file mask) & maximum size
• Change the versioning date/time stamp format and versioning rate.
• Zip or delete old versions after a specified time (or just keep storing the files)
• Optionally delete backup files on original file deletion permanently or to the Recycle Bin
• Fault tolerance in case your backup folder/drive goes off line or source files are locked. Drives re-sync'ed when they come online
• MS Office, Visual Studio plus many others supported (temp file creation, delete then rename is treated as original file change)
• Backup file & version explorer included
• Open backups or file versions directly (file extensions are preserved) or via inbuilt explorer
• Compare file versions (using an external application)
• Restore file versions one at a time or all at once via inbuilt explorer or manually
• Run a program on each file change so you can encode, resize or do anything to the file - just use AutoVer for the change detection
• Runs discretely in the Windows System Tray & and can be 100% portable (AutoVer can be installed on removable media)
• x86/x32 (32 bit) and x64 (64 bit) support (Windows 2000 to Windows 7+)

autover's Issues

🐛[Bug] Initial backups not created when using relative paths

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create "autover_backups" folder one level up from watched folder.
2. Set Backup to: to ..\autover_backups (note: double period)
3. Checkmark Create initial backup, OK out of dialog.
4. Observe bug: No initial backup creation occurs ("autover_backups" folder stays empty)
5. Re-enter watcher properties, change Backup to: to full path to "autover_backups" folder.
6. Checkmark Create initial backup, OK out of dialog.
7. Observe expected behavior: Initial backup creation occurs.
8. Delete backups, emptying "autover_backups" folder.
9. Re-enter watcher properties, change Backup to: back to relative path (..\autover_backups)
10. Checkmark Create initial backup, OK out of dialog.
11. Observe bug: once again no initial backup creation occurs.

FR: File hashing

I often edit lots and lots of small files over the course of a day. Even small losses of data can be hugely problematic and, as a result, I use AutoVer. One problem is that I often save files to either a device or a service that I don't really trust (see #1). As such, it would be ideal to have some method to check all files via a hashing method. There are a few ways to do this:

• Add CRC hash to file name for quick verification
• Save a hash next to each file (so for filename1.zip; filename1.zip.sfv... filename2.zip; filename2.zip.sfv, etc.)
• Save a single hash with a list of all hashes

Workaround: save all files locally, use a hashing program like RapidCRC Unicode, and then save to an external source.

[Feature request] Backup limits

Current behavior:

The program will backup versions of files until it starts going above a certain level, after which you can throw it into a zip or 7zip file. Since the media you may back up to may be limited, it becomes necessary to manually go into the folder or archive and delete old versions.

Requested behavior

Any one of the following could help mitigate the issue:

• File iteration limits (e.g. only backup X versions of a given file, discarding the oldest when it reaches the limit)
• Individual file limits (e.g. only backup any individual file in a set until it reaches X megabytes, discarding the oldest when it reaches the limit)
• Total backup size limits. When the limit is reached, the oldest file, regardless of which one, is deleted.

[Feature request] Password protection

Ability to save to secure 7zip files that I can put on remote or attached storage. In the case of cloud storage, I'd prefer if my provider didn't know what I was backing up and for my external drive. For attached storage, I'd like to be protected in case someone walks off with said drive.

Workaround: save to a encrypted container folder like TrueCrypt or Veracrypt, which is a problem for cloud drives due to file size limitations.

Main Website links to wrong code-base.

https://beanland.net.au/AutoVer/ links to http://autover.codeplex.com/ instead of https://github.com/hunterbeanland/AutoVer, as the main website for the source code.

Dead project?

Just wanted to get someone to reply here as to whether or not the project is simply on hold or has shut down.

Whatever the case, this program still works great on both my Win7-86 and Win10-64 machines despite some minor issues (some detailed here on Github). I love it, I've donated in the past, and would certainly donate in the future.

Timer for limiting versioning is not working properly

I set 1 min 1 sec for each versioning but app still creates backups whenever the file(s) are changed

[low priority] Empty folder issue

Background

This basically came from a desire to grab any and all DOC files on my computer and make sure they were backed up regardless of location. The idea here was to avoid losing any data even if I stored it in the wrong place accidentally. I've labeled this "low priority" because I don't think many people set up their machines this way.

Current behavior

When you select a root folder (e.g. My Documents), choose "include subfolders", and then filter for a specific group in those folders, you get a lot of empty folders in the "Backup to" folder.

Requested behavior

Don't create a folder for something if there's no content to put in it.

[Feature request] Capability to break up zip or 7zip files

This is primarily for Cloud backup users that usually have a file backup size limit. For example, Google Drive has a 50 meg file size limit (according to this article).

Current behavior

Files saved to the available archive (under the Versioning tab of the Watcher window) grow over time as files are versioned with no discernible limit.

Requested behavior

Ability to break up individual ZIP or 7ZIP files into limited size files, For example, a 115 meg file would become six separate 20 meg files.

🐛[Bug] Infinite folder recursion

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set Backup to: to .\autover_backups (note: single period)
2. Checkmark Include sub folders
3. Checkmark Create initial backup
4. OK dialog asking to create backup directory
   Observe infinite creation of nested 'autover_backups' folders.

Expected behavior: backup folder can reside within watched folder (and is ignored).
Worse alternative expected behavior: error if attempting to place backup folder within watched folder.

[Feature Request] Save to cloud hosting services

Current behavior

Saves to FTP.

Requested behavior

Ability to save to common cloud hosting services or WebDAV.