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Recommendations for Backup Software?

S

st8ic

n00b
Joined
Feb 12, 2012
Messages
21
I have a small amount of data (10-15GB) on my main machine which I'd like to back up to my NAS drive. I'm looking for software that:

  • is free
  • can schedule the backups
  • is capable of encrypting the data (in case someone breaks in and grabs the storage drive)

Can anybody recommend a backup program? I tried Create Synchronicity but it doesn't have encryption. I tried Ace Backup but I found it complicated and buggy, and the encryption is painfully slow and single-threaded.
 
you could find an encryption program to encrypt the data and then either use the built in backup utility or synctoy and windows task scheduler.
 
Windows backup will keep encryption if the current data is encrypted, will also encrypt if the storage drive is encrypted.
Technically any compressed data is encrypted, just might not take much to decrypt it.
Microsft backups (at least from Win 7) appear as blobs and are not trivially read; I haven't explored their security beyond surface.
 
RocketTech said:
Technically any compressed data is encrypted.
Click to expand...

No.

Compression uses a known process; ie any ZIP file is compressed the same way and can be decompressed by anyone.

Encryption uses a known process, but adds a key. Without the key, even if you know the process, you cannot decrypt the data.

A lot of backup software includes encryption, though you'll still find some software that just slaps a password in a file header and considers it protected, even though the data is in clear text.
 
jjeff1 said:
No.
Click to expand...

No.
Compression uses an algorithm and the key is typically given. No where was it stated nor implied compression was secure, simply that they use similar processes.
If a compressed file type was not known and the file header was removed, how easy would it be to de-compress? Would you not need to try different decompression methods in turn, or make an educated guess at the compression type? Wouldn't this make the compression type the key? Just because the key is given does not mean there is no key.
 
a compressed file type was not known and the file header was removed,
Click to expand...

At this point we're getting pretty far from the point I was trying to make; running Winzip on a file doesn't protect it.

But in any case, there are a lot of different compression types. Zip doesn't use a simple header; it's a bytestream, consisting of alternating header sections and data sections. If you were to intentionally remove all the headers and directory descriptors from a zip file, then yes, it would probably be rather difficult to decode. But, given how the zip file format works, even removing all those headers wouldn't completely destroy the data. Zip uses letter frequency (basically). E is still the most common letter in english texts. You could recreate a header based on letter frequency and probably have a decent chance of decoding the data, depending on the data type.

But again intentionally corrupting data isn't what we're talking about

Encryption is based upon math that is easy to do in one direction (encrypt/decrypt) but very difficult to do in the other direction (crack encryption). When people talk about encryption, they mean things like AES-128. Using the fastest supercomputer in the world, it would take a billion, billion years to crack an AES-128 key. And you have to completely crack it.

If I get 90% of the letter substitutions correct in a pkzip file, I can probably still figure out the type of data in the file; is anyone confused about what username@gmail.c9m is? But with encrypted data, say with AES, you need the whole key, every bit, or you get garbage.
 
You're beating a dead horse. No where was it said compression is secure- actually I even cleary stated that compression alone was NOT secure.
AES-128 current break estimate is approximately 50 years or less using the world's fastest super computers- actually all the computing power currently on earth. Given the rate computational speed and power increases, it will probably be just a couple years before it is down to 5-10 years. Even a single desktop today would probably only take a couple hundred years to break AES-128. No key is uncrackable- the strength comes in the amount of time it takes to crack the key, and whether the information will be of any use in that timeframe.
Lesson- don't archive encrypted data without evaluating the current key strength, weaknesses, and time to crack.
Just to be clear, compression alone is not necessarily secure.
 
Try @Max SyncUp. it’s not free but with a large discount that makes it nearly free in view of its features.
 
dashpuppy said:
Looks neat, can you back to a shared folder ? and setup different dates for different folders ? ie a backup for monday to friday ?
Click to expand...

Yes to all of those. You create task lists that can run at whatever time, frequency you want. Shared folder, FTP, USB, local drive you name it. Really a wonderful solution especially for free.
 
CrashPlan..

Fairly close to setting it up on my unRAID box and ditching my Apple Time Crapsule I got for free.
 
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