Backing up your files is an effective way of protecting your data against data theft, hard disk failure, malware infection and many other unpredictable events. Experts agree that backups should be saved away from the source, so in case of physical damage like fire, the backups stay safe and secure. Cloud storage services provide an excellent way of backing up files. The free Duplicati program allows you to backup your files across a number of well known cloud storage services like Amazon S3, Microsoft Skydrive, Google Drive and more.
Here are some of the features of Duplicati :
- It uses AES-256 encryption to encrypt all your data before upload.
- It supports incremental backups to save bandwidth
- It supports backup scheduling to automatically backup your data.
- it supports many targets like FTP, Cloudfiles, WebDAV, SSH (SFTP), Amazon S3 etc.
- It allows you to selectively filter which type of files or folders you want to upload.
- it can backup even in-use or locked files both in Windows and Linux.
You can download Duplicati from its website. The downloads are seperately available for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. It also support Linux and Mac OS. The download for Windows is around 10 megabytes. After the installation, it places an icon in the Windows system tray and shows a Duplicati setup wizard to setup a new backup, or restore from a backup. To setup a new backup, you can select the option Setup a new backup and click on the Next.
The backup wizard would take you through many steps collecting information about the new backup. It would ask you for a backup name and optionally a group for this backup. Then it would ask you to select files and folders for backup. You can choose the files in your user profile (My Documents, My Pictures etc.) or you can specify one or more custom folders. It would ask if you want to protect the backup with encryption (AES-256 or GPG) and password. It is a good idea to protect the backup with password especially if you are going to use online storage services like Google Drive. Then you have to select a target where you want to backup. You can choose from Amazon S3, Rockspace Cloudfiles, Google Drive, Microsoft Skydrive, FTP server, File based (backup to local hard disk or portable USB disk), WebDAV and Secure FTP.
The next portion of the backup setup depends on which service you have selected. If you have selected FTP server or cloud storage like Google Drive, then you may have to supply your account login credentials. If you have selected file based backup, then you can specify the location where you want to save the backup. In the next steps, you can select the file filters (which files you want to backup), bandwidth limits, how often the backup should be run etc. Finally, a summary would be shown. At this step, you can optionally select Run backup now to run the backup instantly before clicking the Finish button to save the backup task.
After you have setup a new backup, Duplicati would continue to run in the background and automatically run the backup tasks at the scheduled times. You can right-click on its system tray icon and select Status to see what it is doing (you can also double-click on the system tray icon to open the status window). The status window would show the current backup tasks being run as well as a list of successful completed backups.
If you want to restore your files from a backup, then you would have to run the restore wizard. You can open the wizard window by selecting Wizard from the menu that pops up when you right-click on the Duplicati system tray icon. The wizard would take you through many different steps to select a backup, select a backup point (you can selectively choose only few files to be restored), destination folder where you want the files to be restored etc. Then finally you can click on the Finish button to start the restore process.
Duplicati is a free and open source software that makes the backup and restore tasks as painless as it can be. It works on all the popular operating systems – Windows, Linux and Mac. It is based on the two simple rules of effective backup – store your data far away from the source and update your backup regularly. You can use it to keep your valuable data safe with regular backups and secure with strong AES encryption.
You can download Duplicati from http://www.duplicati.com/.