Does SD archive deleted or changed files?

[jbobdobbs]

One of your competitors, Synk Pro, offers a feature that seems to provide a lot of comfort to my clients: archiving.

It works like this:

You have a source and target folder. You delete a file from the source folder during the day. The backup runs at night and the target folder gets updated to remove the file you deleted. Now the two folders are identical. However, the deleted file gets sent to an Archive folder which you designate, inside a folder bearing the date of the backup that caused the deletion.

Archives can be automatically deleted after a set number of days to avoid sucking up tons of disk space.

This provides a lot of comfort to my clients. It protects them against accidentally deleting a folder of important files, then doing a backup and finding that the files you needed are gone, but can be found in the archive folder.

SuperDuper is cheaper and I suspect easier to use. I've spend some time poking around to see if this feature exists in SD, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't. Does SuperDuper offer any similar functionality?

[dnanian]

It does not. Instead, we suggest simply rotating two (or more) backups as described in the User's Guide. This tends to preserve files "long enough", while also ensuring that each backup is an exact, restorable copy of the source.

[jbobdobbs]

Originally Posted by dnanian

It does not. Instead, we suggest simply rotating two (or more) backups as described in the User's Guide. This tends to preserve files "long enough", while also ensuring that each backup is an exact, restorable copy of the source.

I'm backing up a data only drive here. Boot drive needs to be cloned regularly, but I need a way to back up the data drive that's sane.

For example, if a designer trashes a folder on Monday and that night, the machine's backed up, then the only copy in the office is gone, unless there's an archive. Unless there's a second partition on the same drive, in which case, the only remaining copy would be at least a day out of day, and would only exist until the data drive is copied out to the second partition. So you're basically talking about 5 x 165Gb partitions in order to have a work week on premises, and then on Friday, when they swap one external drive for the other drive (which gets taken home in case of disaster), the only copy could potentially be on the other side of the world.

The archive function extends the window of time that an unintentionally deleted or changed file is available on the system. In a small office, with well-meaning but rushed people, this is a life-saver.

Is this functionality you'd consider building into SD?

[dnanian]

We're always considering new things for SD, including this kind of thing. But it's not something that's likely to appear in the short term.