Bvckup 2 Release 71

[Welldone]

It's a simple data backup software that is meant for mirroring directories. If you are currently doing your backups by copying files from your primary machine to an external drive or a NAS, the app will help you do it better, faster and in altogether more pleasant format.

What it is not
It's not a system backup, it doesn't create a system image that can be used to restore a bootable system after a failure. It is not a all-in-one backup tool, it doesn't compress things, it doesn't FTP or encrypt files nor does it have a restore function.

It merely copies things from A to B, as is, and it is exceedingly good at it.

Speed
1. It uses delta copying to update file modified between the backup runs, so that it copied only modified blocks of files. This speeds things up, in many cases dramatically. I run a backup that includes 256 GB TrueCrypt container and straight copying to an external USB3 drive takes about 4 hours. With delta copying a day worth of changes takes under an hour to propagate.

2. It uses fully asynchronous I/O with adaptive buffering, meaning that the app never waits for a read/write request to complete before issuing the next one. This eliminates unnecessary idling when copying and helps keeping the copying pipeline busy at all times. It has a higher bulk copying speed than newer robocopy versions and other specialized 3rd party programs that I have tested.

3. It uses parallel disk scanning, when building the file lists for source/destination locations. Not a rocket science by any means, but this can speed things up by a factor of 10 when scanning slower NASes over laggy networks.

4. It defaults to maintaining a local snapshot of the destination, instead of re-scanning it on every run. It basically scans destination once. remembers what's there and the incrementally updates this snapshot as it works its way through the backup. So at the end of the backup it has the exact picture of what's at the destination, so on the next run it has no need to scan it.

5. It's heavily optimized through out in terms of mundane code optimization. I come from the system programming background and writing a lean code is a habit. The app is written pretty much in C, though it does use several C++ features and it is compiled as a ++ code. There are no dependencies on any external frameworks - not even MFC/ATL - it's all done over raw Win32 API with a bit of COM where it's unavoidable.

Convenience
1. Removable device tracking - it can make a note of a device fingerprint or its volume label and then track it across all drive letters, should the drive get a new one. This also prevents a backup from going on some other removable device that may just show up under the same letter.

2. There backup scheduling options - periodic, real-time and manual

3. Volume shadow copying

4. Symlink support

5. Move/rename detection at source

6. Archiving of deleted items with age-based auto-pruning

The UI
It has the best UI in business. Guaranteed.

Screenshots: https://bvckup2.com/wip/

Homepage: http://www.bvckup2.com/

Changelog:

Spoiler

New features
1. Added email alerts and notifications

This is a big one, so here's a separate thread for it -
https://bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/473

2. Added real-time device tracking by volume labels

Previously tracking by volume *was* supported, however changes to the volume labels weren't tracked. Meaning, that if you were to rename the drive, the app would remain oblivious to change. It also meant that the event of unlocking a BitLocker'd device was ignored by the app as well.

3. Added support for drives with BitLocker encryption

The app is now capable to recognizing locked BitLocker devices and it provides proper UI messaging around them.

4. Added automatic NTFS compression of backup logs

A simpler changed, but with a good immediate effect - backup logs and their indecies now have NTFS compression enabled for them. They are highly compressible, so you should see their "space on disk" to be 20-30% of their raw size.

5. Multiple improvements to the backup configuration UI

I am listing this as a new feature, so that if you are upgrading from an earlier version, you'd take notice. In particular, the Device Tracking configuration for a backup has been moved from the More Options panel and into a single "pushpin" icon embedded directly into the Source/Destination entry fields. Like so -
https://bvckup2.com/wip/r71-look-here.gif

To access the actual settings, just click on the icon and you'll get this -
https://bvckup2.com/wip/r71-dev-tracking-3.gif

Also, the app will automatically enable device tracking when you enter a location on a *removable* device. In this case, it will let you know about this automatic change with a little animation -
https://bvckup2.com/wip/r71-hint-shakes.gif

The reclaimed space in More Options panel was given to the email notifications - https://bvckup2.com/wip/r71-configure-alerts.gif

Issues resolved
1. Added special handling for Netgear Stora NAS -- yet another case of weird timestamp truncation. Probably weirdest of them to date -
https://bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/461/2671

2. Added special handling for FUSE volumes -- FUSE being "Filesystem in Userspace", which is a contraption used by some apps to implement file system functionality without needing to write any kernel code. In certain cases FUSE refuses (ha) to open a file for exclusive use and want to have at least some access sharing on a file enabled. Bvckup now recognizes this case and silently re-opens the file as per FUSE's expectations.

3. Added support for WIM reparse points -- these are mounted .wim containers. Apparently these are used in the wild. Go figure.

4. Resolved several issues with shadow copying support -- this is a fairly big deal. There are two unrelated changes.

First is that the logic for selecting optional VSS components was a bit too dumb and apparently it could've been improved. This has no quantifiable effect on an average setup, but it makes difference for the Windows Server installations.

Second was a change to how a snapshot is removed after the backup. Apparently, re-initializing VSS interface and disposing the snapshot through this secondary instance doesn't work in some cases, including Windows 2008 R2. Have no idea why, but the work around was to re-use the original VSS interface to do the disposal.

5. Changed handling of disappearing folders at source -- previously, if a folder at source location would go missing between the scanning and the copying, the app would abort the backup, erroneously thinking that the entire source device gone missing. This is fixed now.

Other changes
1. Added support for simulating a run without enabling a job

2. Added "start/stop all jobs" options to the systray menu -- this can be disabled through the .ini if you prefer an original two-item systray menu. Just ask me how.

3. Default archive folder name is now "$Archive (Bvckup 2)" -- this goes into effect for all newly created backups. All existing backups will continue using "$Archive of Deleted Items (Bvckup)".

4. Archive trimming is now enabled by default -- that is, the app will start items from the archive after 2 weeks of grace period.

5. Added slide-in context help to several UI dialogs -
https://bvckup2.com/wip/r71-dev-tracking-3.gif

This is currently enabled for Device Tracking, Net Logon and Email Config dialogs. Looks for "More on this..." links and "?" icons to access the help.

6. Tray icon animation now can be suppressed -- as per request, via an .ini edit. Ask me how.

7. Declared app's support for Windows 10 -- simply added W10 to the app's manifest.

There are few more smaller change and bug fixes, I'll just skip listing them as they aren't very interesting.

Source: https://www.bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/474

Download Link for 2 weeks free-trial: http://bvckup2.com/get

 

[Welldone]

Going forward the app will be versioned as follows -

Release N -- feature release
Release N Revision 1 -- follow-up release, bugfixes only
Release N Revision 2 -- ...
...
Release (N+1) -- next feature release
...

Ideally, there would be no Revisions, but in practice there might be a need for them.

 

[Welldone]

Release 71, Revision 8 is out.
Changelog

1. Resolved an issue with "Backup config" dialog and ?:\ paths - that is the app would go down if one specifies a path that starts with a non-letter and followed by :\, e.g. #:\

2. Resolved an issue with "Email details" dialog - a rare issue that surfaced only when opening Backup Details dialog more twice or more in quick succession.

3. Suppressed volume label updates for A:\ and B:\ drives - the volume labels are now NOT re-queried from the floppy drives, because apparently Windows does an actual physical read of the media and it gets annoying quickly when this happens several times a minute.

4. Added the "on critical errors only" option for email alerts - that is the app can now send an alert only when a backup either cannot be run or is aborted due to a critical error.

5. Added a static system tray icon for the "busy" state - this is when a "busy" animation of the tray icon is disabled, the app will now show a distinct icon (as opposed it's regular "idle" icon as before).

6. Added UI support for re-styling individual backup jobs - I will be updating https://www.bvckup2....forum/topic/481 in a moment, but in brief - it's now possible to adjust *colors* of an individual backup tile. The settings are read from %AppLocalData%\Bvckup2\ui\backup-000x\styling.ini file if it exists.

7. Also, added a provisional fix for this issue -
https://www.bvckup2....forum/topic/484 - the app now formally requests device notifications, even though it appears to be an optional requirement for the type of notifications that Bvckup needs.

Source: https://www.bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/474