Windows rsync client that handles open files (potentially found)

[NAS]

For anyone that uses rsync you will know how well it works in linux (almost magic) and nearly how well it works in windows.

 

The problem with windows is that everyl client to date  just cant handle open files. This is bad news as it means the very files you are using and likely want to backup are the ones you dont get done properly.

 

Every now and again i go and looks for new clients and i "may" have found one.

 

rsync.net despite what it sounds like is a commercial off site backup service. As an aside based on my readings they have a very good reputation, price plan along with a monster feature set.

 

But thats not the interesting bit. They offer a windows client:

 

http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.html

 

According to the blurb:

 

"rsync.net customers have access to a powerful, easy to use backup agent that handles automated, encrypted backups - even open files. "

 

 

Having a play with the client you can see mention of Volume Shadow Copy which is probably the only way to do open file backup reliably.

 

Now I am having 2 problems with the client:

 

1. I previously used SyncBack Pro and the saved settings totally mess with this client (meaning its http://2brightsparks.com/ that do this service)

2. The client seems to not like using your own rsync server

 

However i dont think either of these are show stoppers.

 

I would welcome any other opinions and experiments on this as the implications are pretty huge for unRAID. One feature whcih WHS consistently wins over unRAID is its backup agent. With rsync working proerply on windows we wipe this advatage out. Never mind the fact that proper rsync for windows would be a fantastic quick and efficient backup solution.

 

 

[stephenm00]

Fixed

[NAS]

I have a proper rsync server running that i can connect to, but not with this client so far. It is saying not within license or something.

 

I will be mightily annoyed if it is crippled to only run with their own service since they are heavily relying on GPL projects to run that service.

 

Perhaps we should just ask them I would be happy to pay for the client

[stephenm00]

Fixed

[NAS]

After some more research it turns out this was a red herring.

 

The client is based on:

 

http://www.superflexible.com/index.htm

 

(and not http://2brightsparks.com/ that I stated earlier)

 

Whilst it does work with shadow copy and handle partial uploads it doesn't do it the rsync way)

 

Saying all this  it is still potentially a nice solution since it handles SSH etc so I will try the demo today.

[marcusone]

I use superflexibly and love it!  It does do partial files (in blocks) to save bandwidth (if you do two way syncs, this is more difficult to setup as it requires a "server" on the other end to perform the hash checks).

But is does use SSH (SCP) and can also zip/encrypt files, versioning, etc!

[keland44]

i dunno if you guys saw my post about this but i've been checking out fling to back up the my documents folder on my wife's laptop to the unraid server it seems to be working decent but i'm lookin for other solutions i'll check this one out and see how it works and report back

here is details on fling at download squad

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/04/22/fling-keeps-local-network-ftp-folders-and-flash-drives-in-syn/

[NAS]

Anyone here use cwrsync or deltacopy. I am having all sorts of grief with base folders that contain spaces in their names "My Documents".

 

It works for a few times then gives all sorts of permission errors.

[stephenm00]

Fixed

[NAS]

I think it might be a bug in delta copy. If you choose a base folder to sync that has a space the command it creates is not escaped causing the remote folder to be created incporrectly.

 

i.e. "My Documents" gets created as "My"

 

Will do some more testing as I cant believe such and obvious bug made it this many versions in

[keland44]

i went and tried out Fling again on my wife's laptop and this is working and working very well you can set it up to copy in intervals and not have to worry about setting it up on the windows scheduling manager.

This is a system that has windows xp sp3

I'll try and see if it works on my roommates laptop which has vista and on my desktop with windows 7

[NAS]

How well do you think it would work on a 0.5MB connection?

[keland44]

hmm it depends on how big the files that are in there that's being transferred plus it's a tray icon and it can run in the background won't hurt to test it out they have a upload only download only and sync feature along with letting you set up time intervals to do your backups