Continuous backup software

Can anyone recommend a reliable and cheap / free continuous backup software? I'm thinking of putting in a NAS box and running continuous backups so that if any of my multi-boots or other experiments trash a disk I have my most recent stuff. Right now I'm lazy and my backups can be a week old.

Extra points to backups that can copy just the changed part of a file. My mail folder is enormous, and I'd rather have just the changed segment copied instead of the whole thing. I actually used mirror folder to copy changes to another drive in my machine in realtime.

Thanks.
 
As far as immediate on the fly backups that is a waste of resources and also you can not do that for system files anyways.

I use a combination of file and disk image backups.

Syncback is a great tool for file backups and you can set it to backup what specific folders you want on both local machine and networked resources. The SE version ($35) has even more features including being able to archive old/deleted versions of a file. Either version you can schedule it to run daily, weekly, hourly or whatever you want.

I then use macrium reflect free for disk image backups. You can schedule this to whatever schedule you want to create a complete hard drive backup of your system. You can also do full and incremental backups as well as schedule it to only keep X number of full backups. For free software it has become pretty robust in features.
 
I agree on the difference between system and data backups. My system backups are Easeus ToDo Backup image files. I can re-load an old one at any time and my system runs just fine. I do file backups separately, just as you said.

I'll read up on Macrium and Syncback. I'm also considering buying Acronis True Image, but it weirds me out just a little that it works on the sector level, even for file backups.

Qn: Macrium can do a full system image even while the system is running? If I want to make an image that will boot when reloaded, I have to boot to the backup tool to make the backup.

I'm used to incremental backups making a full copy of the changed file; it would take me some time to adjust and trust this new way.
 
Macrium can do a full system image while the OS is running. You only need to go into recovery to restore the complete image.

You can also "mount" the image if say you only need a few specific files to restore and not need to revert the entire image.

If by NAS box you mean a PC with hard drives (vs a sinology or other standalone), if you install macrium to it then you can just put the drive from the damaged PC (or the replacement drive) and restore the disk image that way. Much easier then trying to restore from the local PC over the network.
 
My current backup are done to hot-swap naked HDDs. I want to use an actual NAS box for continuous protection so that if I spill a gallon of salt water on the PC I can still get at my data. My weekly backups don't give me enough of a secure feeling, especially that I can lose Emails.

Yes, I am paranoid. I used to get paid for it when I spent part of my time on system security in an older job.
 
As far as emails go I would not use a provider that does not allow for IMAP connection. POP3 is a dinosaur that needs to be put out to death in the pasture. With everyone having 3 or more computing devices there is no place for a protocol that saves everything to 1 local machine.
 
RAID 1, although if you are talking about the full system getting damaged that may not help if both drives are out of order. Why not keep your emails on the email server? These days to get email on phone, computer, tablet, smart office chair, your pen, etc... you pretty much have to do that anyway.
 
Yeah, I got to stop using Pop3 and come up with a better way of viewing the world. I liked that in Lotus Notes I could have a complete copy of my mail folders on BOTH my machine and the server. Can I do that with Outlook?

OTOH I never delete old emails that were relevant, so I have a huge amount of storage. I suspect that I should keep a local archive. I'm waiting for someone to tell me that I can keep terabytes of data in the cloud and should not be concerned about this.
 
I've found out the best backup (at least for Windows computers) has been the Windows Home Server' Client connector software. Unfortunately, Microsoft stopped selling it, and it's "successor", Windows Server 12 Essentials, is not $99 anymore.

As for e-mails: If you use Outlook (not Express but Office variety), you can build enourmous PST file which will give you troubles as it's size jumps into gigabytes. I keep several archive folders (these are separate PST files), and I have setup Outlook to move messages there either on a schedule or on demand. I usually move messages older than a year.

Message retrieval: Even if your ISP supports POP3 only, you can still configure almost any mail client NOT to delete messages from the server once they are retrieved. The downside of this is that if the client loses sync with the server, it could re-download all of the messages all of sudden. Proper management of messages on the ISP side (organising them in folders by eg year/month) could minimize that risk.
 


Yes you can do it with Outlook, if your email provider offers that option. I use Charter and get email on the PC in Outlook, my Android phone, my iPad and can access it through webmail on Charter's website as well with nothing getting lost. Since so many people get email on their phones and tablets, I've seen some pretty good setup instructions for email lately. Used to be you did one thing, and that's it, now they tell you how to setup different options like IMAP or POP3.