Looking for a Time Machine alternative for Windows

[britechguy]

How much time do you think it's going to take me to rename/reorganize 150,000 files?

If I had to wager, I'd bet that virtually all of these are in but a few folders.

Get rid of either the "depth in the folder tree" or take a few minutes to abbreviate the length of some of the names along the path and, voila!

You act like this is going through one by one, when generally many thousands can be done in a matter of seconds. If you have 10000 files down the same path somewhere that's 257 or more characters long, how long would it take you to change but one of the folder names in the path to something shorter?

How long would it take you to move thousands of somethings "buried deep" to a brand new folder, still meaningfully named, much closer to the root folder of the drive?

Gads, but you do love to complicate everything. And if you literally have to go through one by one because you have folder names like "Aunt Fanny's Birthday Party 1976" under Photos rather than a folder 1976, with a subfolder Fanny's B'day, then you get what you deserve. Planning is the secret of success, and failing to plan (which you've clearly done, by your own admission) is really planning to fail when it comes to something as simple, and well known, as the filename length restricton.

 

[sapphirescales]

If I had to wager, I'd bet that virtually all of these are in but a few folders.

LOL, I wish it was. I wouldn't be in this predicament if this were the case.

then you get what you deserve

Yeah, I'm pretty much screwed. It's not as simple as shortening folder names. The structure MUST be maintained in order for the stuff I use to work. My only option is to .RAR it and then un-.RAR it every time I want to use it.

and failing to plan (which you've clearly done, by your own admission) is really planning to fail when it comes to something as simple, and well known, as the filename length restricton.

I've never had to deal with this before but thanks to Coronavirus I have no choice. You know what I did for backup before? I'd manually back up my drives using Unstoppable Copier to external hard drives and put them in a safe deposit box in the bank. I'd do it every 6 months. For files that changed frequently (like my business records), I had a script set up to run the backup to a folder on my server. I don't use cloud backups.

Now that I'm completely isolated (I haven't set foot in a store or other building in almost a year now), I need a solution other than using external drives stored at the bank. I can't believe how terrible the options are for backup in Windows. I would have given up a long time ago if it weren't for Coronavirus.

 

[fabs]

I think @fabs does this with his program as I've never run into a character limit using it.

It might just be cheaper to have some custom software developed. I wonder if @fabs would be interested in making something like this?

That's right, Fab's can copy files over that limit. It had to because of previously told issues: users often make deep folders trees with long names and endless file names. The result was data losses when it came to handle them. You can imagine how unhappy people could be when they figured out that their files were missing. So, in Fab's, I use prefixed paths. IE, C:\Users becomes something like this in my code \\?\C:\Users. This is how I can bypass the limit.

I don't use file history at all but I'm shocked that it can't bypass that limit too. It's developed by Microsoft right? The same guys who develop the excellent robocopy cmd line tool that also bypasses that char length limit. Why on Earth did they make that mistake with file history? Just unbelievable...

Now, about developing a new tool, I have to say that Fab's is constantly giving me a lot of work. Just to tell: I've released Fab's 7 in March 2018 (wow, almost 3 years ago) and I've still not have written a single code line for Fab's 8 yet! Ideas are there but time to start a new project is not. So, I can't reasonably say that I'm in for writing something like that, I'm sorry but that's too big for me.

 

[sapphirescales]

So, in Fab's, I use prefixed paths. IE, C:\Users becomes something like this in my code \\?\C:\Users. This is how I can bypass the limit.

I'm not much of a programmer, but I was aware of this little trick. Every software should utilize it. Even CrashPlan doesn't support long file paths. It's unbelievable.

I don't use file history at all but I'm shocked that it can't bypass that limit too.

No one was more shocked than I, but I've run several tests on several machines double and triple checking that long file paths is turned on in the Group Policy editor (and even manually checking the registry to make sure it actually changed and force updating Group Policy just to make sure) and I still get errors in the log that file names weren't backed up. On the off chance the errors just were still logging even though the files were actually being backed up I checked File History manually and sure enough, those files with long paths are just completely missing from the backup.

I'm sorry but that sounds too big for me.

Ah, no worries. I just thought I'd throw it out there because you write good software. Your UI is terribly ugly but that's not a big deal to me. I'd rather have ugly software that works than pretty software that doesn't.

 

[fabs]

Your UI is terribly ugly but that's not a big deal to me. I'd rather have ugly software that works than pretty software that doesn't.

Ouch. That one hurts. I don't think it's that horrible but I may have bad tastes. How would a good looking software be like?

 

[sapphirescales]

Ouch. That one hurts. I don't think it's that horrible but I may have bad tastes. How would a good looking software be like?

There's a lot of ugly software out there that doesn't even work well so your software shines in comparison since it works great. That being said, your UI elements are extremely dated and it's just not visually appealing at all. Just look at Nero BackItUp 2021. It's very stylish and functional too (other than the 260 character limit, which makes it a crap program):

It's simple but elegant looking. The software looks complete, not like a mis-mash of different styles and buttons. The fonts used are very nice and it has a cohesive color scheme. It has an XP-era feel to it while also looking fresh and modern. It's super easy and intuitive. Your software is too to an extent, but it could use a bit of work. I wouldn't worry about this though since you're targeting technicians and not idiot consumers.

It wouldn't take much to make your software look much better. Don't feel bad. Most programmers aren't good designers and vice versa. I guarantee you the people who programmed Nero BackItUp didn't design the visuals. You've done the hard part, which is making a good, functional program that works well. I mean, seriously, just hop on over to Fiverr and pay someone to design a better UI. You could probably get it done for $50. I paid $5 for my logo because I sure as heck couldn't design it. Same thing with my website. I coded my website, but I had someone else design a PSD template so it looked nice. Do what you're good at and outsource what you're not. It's for the best unless you want to develop those skills for yourself, but you can't teach yourself to be artistic and good at design. You're either born like that or you're not. I was not unfortunately.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@fabs Your UI uses old styling and hasn't gone over to the modern flat UI... and therefore it's ugly.

Sad thing is, I prefer yours and the older UIs because they did a better job of teaching people how to use the software. Modern UIs you have to just "know" somehow... it's annoying.

 

[sapphirescales]

Modern UIs you have to just "know" somehow... it's annoying.

Correction - BAD modern UIs just expect you to "know" something and aren't intuitive. There are plenty of modern UI applications that are easy to use and understand. It's not like modern styles have made programs unintuitive. There are plenty of horribly designed programs that are old.

It's a delicate balance between keeping it simple while also making it so the user doesn't have to guess and poke around trying to find things just to use the program. A button with an obscure icon that doesn't say what it is is bad design. Unless it's something universally accepted (like the I/O logo for power or the floppy disk for save), you have to explain what the button does. Even the hamburger menu confuses like 40% of the population last time I checked back in 2017.

 

[britechguy]

modern flat UI...

Just that was a horrible, horrible design choice, particularly if you work with individuals with visual impairments.

I'd go back to Win Aero and 3-D look controls in a heartbeat. There's plenty of research out there clearly showing that flat-look UIs are not as easy for most to use.

Mind you, there can be awful UIs regardless of the design idiom. I just want the flat look idiom to go on to the trash heap, and I expect eventually it will. Everything old is new again applies in virtually any sphere you can name.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Just that was a horrible, horrible design choice, particularly if you work with individuals with visual impairments.

I'd go back to Win Aero and 3-D look controls in a heartbeat. There's plenty of research out there clearly showing that flat-look UIs are not as easy for most to use.

Mind you, there can be awful UIs regardless of the design idiom. I just want the flat look idiom to go on to the trash heap, and I expect eventually it will. Everything old is new again applies in virtually any sphere you can name.

My largest gripe? You cannot quickly tell what's clickable and what isn't...

The everything should be a single click web page-ish and flat thing is fine... if your clickables are all links. But they aren't, and I can't tell you how many places in MS admin tools these days you have to know these two random words in the corner? yeah... they're a button.

And yes, as soon as accessibility concerns get into the mix, things get SO much worse!

 

[britechguy]

The evil that is what I call "link buttons" (things that are actually click-through links, but presented with a completely flat-look button style) are the spawns of Satan!

But you've hit the nail on the head in that we all use visual cues to know what sort of control we're dealing with, and dimensionality is an integral part of that (or, I guess these days, I should say "should be a part of that").

 

[fabs]

Well. Understood. I'll try to do better for V8 then

 

[sapphirescales]

Well I've decided to try and shorten my paths manually guys. Wish me luck! So far I've been using a program called TreeSize to identify long paths and it's worked out great so far! So far I've sorted through about 800,000 files and 2.7TB worth of data. I'm now running a test on Nero BackItUp to see if it's capable of working with large data loads. So far it's doing very well:

The stated ETA is hilariously inaccurate. This has only been running for about 8 hours now and it's already 68% complete.

 

[sapphirescales]

Welp, Nero BackItUp has a problem I wasn't aware of. If the filename has any non-English characters in it, it fails to recognize that it's been backed up and will back it up again every time the backup is run. I have approximately 1,700 non-English filenames which take up about 2.5GB. This means that if I do a snapshot every day, the software will require an additional 75GB/month to save the same stuff over and over again until I run out of space. I guess I'll be manually renaming 1,700 files (and this isn't even close to all of my files, this was a test backup that didn't even include 1/3 of them!).

This program is far from perfect, but at least it's workable. It's easy to understand how it works under the hood and the data is recoverable even if one of the snapshots becomes corrupted. If it weren't for the convoluted licensing I would recommend this software to my clients 100%.

 

[xrobwx71]

Syncback Pro from 2brightsparks does versioning. I’ve been meaning to test it out, but haven’t gotten to it.

I use Syncback pro to sync my work server back to my at-home NAS. It's easy to manipulate and works well. 3 years with no problems.