Backup Software

What are some good free backup software options? something that would work with old hardware as well as with modern hardware?

What i'm looking for:
Free
runs in background
can run on schedule
with no interuption
with no user input
can re-deploy to different hardware
Incremental backups

I'm assuming you're looking to back up a Windows workstation?

Linux, running SMB and task scheduler on the Windows workstation to copy data to the share. You could write a script on the Linux SMB server to archive off files incrementally.

Not exactly easy or straightforward to get up and running, but you can get it done very cheap.

Veeam Agent for Windows has a free version. Does all of those things. Only works on 2008R2/7 or newer OS though.

bigdogchris said:

Veeam Agent for Windows has a free version. Does all of those things. Only works on 2008R2/7 or newer OS though.

Click to expand...

I'll second that. I just installed Veeam on all my home pcs. Set it up to backup to a USB drive on my Netgear router.

For Windows I like Cobian Backup: http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm

The one and only: rsync

I can throw my suggestion of VEEAM Agent for Windows - Free if you're just doing a single system and don't need complex stuff. It seems to be very quick and lightweight, which is what I like. They also have a free edition for Linux, which is nice. I usually setup RSync on my Linux systems, but may give the VEEAM agent a try just for the simplicity of it.

However, the free-agent doesn't allow you to do multiple schedules / schemes from what I can figure (maybe if you toy with the Task Scheduler?), it's pretty linear in nature. For example, you can't do a schedule for C:\ to be daily and one for D:\ to be weekly. You get one schedule/task per machine (in the free version). The paid version allows you to do a lot more, but it's expensive.

I have Acronis 11 on my home server and it's slooooooooow (also a paid app). I feel like the incremental's take hours for them to scan the changed files. Not sure if maybe VEEAM watches for changes on the fly or not, but it sure does seem to complete an incremental much faster. Acronis is also slow in combining incrementals to full backups. I haven't tested Acronis 12.5 to see if they've sped it up or not.