Currently I am simply copying and pasting my files to an external drive. This requires re-copying the entire drive though, even if only a few files have been added/deleted/edited.
In the past I have used a program called SyncToy (by Microsoft) for backups, which will mirror folders. The mirror feature allows you to create a mirror copy of a folder; any changes you make to folder A will be made to folder B. However running this actually takes longer than copying and pasting the entire drive.
I have also used some other backup software. The issue I had with them though is that they all either change my files into some propriety file format, or put time-stamps in the names of the files. I just want a simple backup of my files, all left intact.
Any recommendations for a decent simple backup program?
You say you don't like the "backup software", well I'm still going to say give Macrium Reflect Free a whirl. Set up a differential backup scheme according to your liking and let it run scheduled as you wish. Use compression as high level as you are comfortable. And so on.. For example a daily differential with weekly full. Keep full two weeks, differential for say a month.
It's free if you only want to back up local disk to either another local disk or a local network system. If you want cloud backup, that will cost money.
It does incremental backups with version in and an easy to use UI.
Doesn't touch the files unless you want to restore and overwrite the existing files. (not the default option.)
Okay I used Robocopy to backup my main drive. It was so fast. It only took a fraction of the time it took SyncToy; probably one-tenth the time, maybe less. Which I find weird, becasue I thought SyncToy was just a GUI for Robocopy. It is old as hell though.
I setup that text file thing, too. Which is pretty cool.
Thank you for all the suggestions. I think I will be using Robocopy, at least for now anyway.
Synctoy actually tries to keep stateful information in hidden files found at the root of each directory. A lot of the time it is asked to sync, it is actually just updating those indexes. The benefit is that if a file was moved, Synctoy can use that information and move the file instantly. Without having access to that stateful information, robocopy's behavior is to delete the file and copy it over again. For small files this isn't an issue, but moving a very large files it means a lot of extra reading/writing for an operation that synctoy could have done instantly.
Synctoy is very old, but sometimes that just means there has never been any reason to update it since it works as intended. I still prefer Robocopy though.