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Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

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Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#11

Post by latitude »

czam wrote: post #9

How does it compare to http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/ ? Apart from the delta copying the feature list sounds similar. I find the FreeFileSync UI quite usable.

Faster bulk copying, lighter build, lighter on resource usage, removable device tracking, much better UI (it's subjective, of course, but just try it out and see for yourself). Formal backup planner, dry runs, native support for running as a service with separate engine and UI processes.

  -- edit --
Let me give an example of what I mean by "much better UI".

Bvckup 2 has a hierarchical log viewer [1] and this thing does an absolute wonder for usability. Essentially you can go from a backup run summary to the specifics of a failure in a matter of 2-3 clicks without being overwhelmed in the process.

The issue however is that it was a total bitch to implement so that it wouldn't require keeping an entire log in memory at all times. See, if the log is flat, it's easy to display its relevant part by looking at the scroll position and then rendering respective chunk from the log file in a window. But once you have a tree, determining which item is visible becomes a hard problem, because random nodes can be opened and closed. Consider the case when you have a million-item log and, say, 15% of the nodes are closed. Moreover, the visibility look-up needs to have a real-time performance, because the window needs to respond in real-time to user dragging scroll button up and down. So, behind the scenes, this hierarchical log viewer is backed by a double-indexed b-tree index file - a construct that that has no prior art and that took me several weeks to converge to and to implement [2]. It could very well pass for a modest PhD thesis in a smaller university :)

So, I mean, there are smaller simple-looking differences between bvckup's UI and other apps, but the thing is that they are sometimes really hard to implement. They do however improve the overall UI experience quite a bit.

[1] http://bvckup2.com/img/r8/screenshot-3-log-viewer-2.png

[2] http://bvckup2.com/wip/#27012014

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#12

Post by sciurus »

latitude wrote: post #4
sciurus wrote: post #3

This may sound strange, but I don't understand how I'd use this for backups. It seems like all it does is sync one folder to another, potentially in realtime. That's essentially RAID1 at the filesytem level, but RAID isn't a backup! What if I accidentally overwrite the contents of a file; how would I recover the previous version?

There are backups and there are backups. For some people, like yourself, archiving backup is the one true backup, while others make do with rolling hourly/daily/weekly backups or even something as rudimentary as copy-pasting folders by hand. Ideally, yes, everyone should be doing versioned backups to a zfs storage cluster. In practice, no, lots of people have just enough motivation to get an external drive and start…

Actually, I was thinking of rolling hourly/daily/weekly backups and I didn't understand how I would set that up with your program. Would I have to sync the same source to multiple destinations on different schedules? That seems inefficient compared to e.g. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to denigrate the software you've written! I was just surprised to see it marketed as a backup tool instead of a file synchronization tool.

The git packfile format is neat; I'm sure you can get some inspiration from https://github.com/bup/bup (which uses it) and http://obnam.org (which has it's own format).

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#13

Post by sciurus »

nodata wrote: post #6
sciurus wrote: post #3

This may sound strange, but I don't understand how I'd use this for backups. It seems like all it does is sync one folder to another, potentially in realtime. That's essentially RAID1 at the filesytem level, but RAID isn't a backup! What if I accidentally overwrite the contents of a file; how would I recover the previous version?

You do snapshots on your target.

Sure, filesystems with snapshotting and deduplication capabilities let you use much simpler tools to implement backups. I don't think they're common in consumer-level storage devices, though.

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#15

Post by abcd_f »

sciurus wrote: post #12
latitude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are backups and there are backups. For some people, like yourself, archiving backup is the one true backup, while others make do with rolling hourly/daily/weekly backups or even something as rudimentary as copy-pasting folders by hand. Ideally, yes, everyone should be doing versioned backups to a zfs storage cluster. In practice, no, lots of people have just enough motivation to get an external drive and start…

Actually, I was thinking of rolling hourly/daily/weekly backups and I didn't understand how I would set that up with your program. Would I have to sync the same source to multiple destinations on different schedules? That seems inefficient compared to e.g. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to denigrate the software you've written! I was just surprised to see…

> I didn't understand how I would set that up with your program

> I was just surprised to see it marketed as a backup tool instead of a file synchronization tool

https://www.hackerschool.com/manual, Ctrl-F, "feign surprise"

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#16

Post by latitude »

sciurus wrote: post #12
latitude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are backups and there are backups. For some people, like yourself, archiving backup is the one true backup, while others make do with rolling hourly/daily/weekly backups or even something as rudimentary as copy-pasting folders by hand. Ideally, yes, everyone should be doing versioned backups to a zfs storage cluster. In practice, no, lots of people have just enough motivation to get an external drive and start…

Actually, I was thinking of rolling hourly/daily/weekly backups and I didn't understand how I would set that up with your program. Would I have to sync the same source to multiple destinations on different schedules? That seems inefficient compared to e.g. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to denigrate the software you've written! I was just surprised to see…

Why is it that you are surprised to see it marketed as a backup tool?

I know about bup, thanks.

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#17

Post by NDizzle »

latitude wrote: post #8
StavrosK wrote: post #5

Shouldn't it be "backvp"?

Let's not go there. I wish I named it something else. It was a dorky name for a toy project, who'd knew it would get any traction. Incidentally, I do own backvp.com.

Sell it to a chiropractor.

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#19

Post by latitude »

laacz wrote: post #18

It would be nice if you'd specify on pricing page [1] what is the price for in sense of time - a month? a year? [1] https://bvckup2.com/purchase/

Erm ... it's an installable standalone program. The price is for lifetime. I thought it was obvious.

Re: Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Simple Fast Backup for Windows

#20

Post by laacz »

latitude wrote: post #19
laacz wrote: post #18

It would be nice if you'd specify on pricing page [1] what is the price for in sense of time - a month? a year? [1] https://bvckup2.com/purchase/

Erm ... it's an installable standalone program. The price is for lifetime. I thought it was obvious.

Sorry, did not catch it. My bad. Thought that is a service, not a standalone app.
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