What is some decent free backup software?

[aimeeandbeatles]

This could be a general thread, but here's what i want to do:
Every couple of days, I go to my Mozilla Thunderbird profile folder and 7z up the entire thing. Unfortunately, a) sometimes I forget, b) Even when 7z'd, it's always full backups and kind of bulky after a while, and c) I'm lazy.

So, essentially what I'm looking for is something that'll make differential backups. Task scheduler is nice but I don't mind pushing a button. Also, 7z compression would be nice too, but as long as it's decent compression and not in a proprietary format I'm fine with it. Also, please no command-line -- I don't trust myself with it.

Normally I'd do my usual freeware search but this is something I'd rather not play trial-and-error with and start off with some solid recommendation. Plus someone else might find the thread useful.

Here's a couple of freeware ones I found on a prelim search -- I haven't really bothered to check them out more fully, although I'm already familiar with the first one.
Toucan (it also syncs files)
AceBackup
Areca Backup
FBackup
Cobian Backup

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Duplicati

I have tried Areca Backup but didn't like it because it required the JRE.

Duplicati is a free backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental, compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers. It works with Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Drive (Google Docs), Rackspace Cloud Files or WebDAV, SSH, FTP (and many more).

Duplicati has built-in AES-256 encryption and backups can be signed using GNU Privacy Guard. A built-in scheduler makes sure that backups are always up-to-date. Last but not least, Duplicati provides various options and tweaks like filters, deletion rules, transfer and bandwidth options to run backups for specific purposes.

Best of all it's free for personal use, I use it to back up all the PCs to my makeshift LAN 'server' at home.

 

[Kaarbaak]

I don't understand why you'd be doing scheduled backups for small, personal files?

If it were server backups I can understand.

I use Carbonite ($5/month) and haven't thought about backups in a long time. Went through 2 restores with a family member and a friend that I got to use it and it was no problem.

If it's a cost thing...then yeah...something like Duplicati is probably a good choice.

Edit: Derp...I came at this thread through RSS and didn't notice the title...so free...yeah...Duplicati

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'll take a look at Duplicati, although I actually backup to a local folder, and then archive it to DVDs when it reaches that point, so I dunno if a cloud-based situation would work for that. I can't spare $5 a month at this point.

I backup my Thunderbird profile because .... well, a lot of the emails are stored only locally, and they're mbox files, which, IIRC, are very prone to corrupting easily. Plus user error.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Duplicati is perfectly capable of backing up to a local folder either on a second drive or on your OS drive(which isn't recommended ofc).

Free cloud based backup could be a solution if you don't have a stringent bandwidth cap and/or the files you back up are small, such as documents or emails. You get a few gigabytes with most online backup services for free.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Problem is that we haven't been able to afford internet above the lowest tier for a while, so its pretty slow and stuff like that

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

It can't possibly be worse then my 56k dialup which has normal transfer speeds of ~2kbps.

I kid you not.