SyncBack SE: Monstrous Backups at a Miniscule Price

SyncBack SE by 2BrightSparks is a superb piece of software for backing up anything and everything on your workstation or network drives. Copy open files, do incremental backups, synchronize directories, perform encrypted backups to external IP addresses or FTP sites, and much, much more. At the pathetically low price of $25, you can forego the use of their fully functional 30 day trial - but it's available HERE if you want it.

With SyncBack SE, you create "Profiles" - akin to scheduled tasks in Windows - which allow you to discreetly define how, when, where and what is being backed up or synchronized. For years I've been a huge fan of Microsoft's Robust File Copy Utility (a.k.a. "RoboCopy) because it allows me to create batch files that I drop into the login script, or just stash on the network for whenever I need them. That comes in handy when you need to make sure someone's not stashing .pst files on their local hard drives, or when you are migrating a user to another workstation and want to quickly copy their favorites, cookies, desktop, etc. RoboCopy will remain in my arsenal. XXCopy too, provides some great features not easily found in other products. For example, XXCopy allows me to create flat directories - scouring a drive and copying all .jpg files to one directory, adding the directory and subdirectory path of their original location to the lefthand side of the filename in the destination. That trick allows me to overcome the problem of identically named files overwriting each other - and tells me exactly where the file came from. BUT SynchBack's another animal altogether. SyncBack gives me huge control that even some of the big daddies of backup are hard pressed to replicate.