Please Note: Portable Apps Backup 1.0 RC 1 has been released, so this topic has been retired.
I've just posted a first beta of the new Portable Apps Backup utility I'd mentioned in-forum previously. This is a simple backup utility (using 7-Zip internally) that allows you to easily backup your portable drive. It's got some handy features that I think lots of users will appreciate:
- Standard Directory Suport - It supports the standard directory layouts of the upcoming Portable Apps Suite 1.0 release (Documents directory where your documents live, PortableApps directory where the individual AppNamePortable directories live). No configuration is required. The options include:
- Entire drive - every file in every directory
- Portable app data - Just the app data files (within AppNamePortable\Data for each app), making it easy to just back up your configurations and profiles
- Documents - just the documents directory
- Zip and 7z Support - It uses Zip format by default, but you can change this to 7z if you'd like right on the options screen.
- High Compression Support - By default, it uses the 'Normal' compression level (level 5) which is a good balance of size and speed. You can select Max Compression and have it use Ultra (level 9) on the options screen.
- Auto File Naming - It automatically names the file with today's date as a part of the filename and the type of backup you did (drive, documents or data), making it easy to keep track of your backups.
- Show Details - If you'd like to watch the details of the backup go by, it'll show you 7-Zip's progress in a command line window.
- Relative Backup Paths (New in Beta 2) - If you select your desktop or My Documents folder (the default), it will be remembered relatively. So, if you move to another PC, the location will still be valid.
- Relative Directory Structure (New in Beta 2) - Your PortableApps folders and Documents folders don't have to be in the root of the drive anymore. They just have to be where expected relative from PortableAppsBackup.exe.
Now, keep in mind that this is meant to be simple. If you'd like to do some more complex backups, I'll be releasing Abakt Portable this week as well, so you can do all sorts of fun file inclusions/exclusions, incrementals, etc.
Please give it a try and let me know what you think.
UPDATE: There was a bug in the original package. Please download Beta 1.1.
UPDATE BETA 2: I released Beta 2 which adds new relative path abilities as well as a prompt regarding an existing destination file.
Regards,
John