Karen’s Replicator
Submitted by Samer on October 31, 2006 – 7:47 pm10 Comments
Rating: 5
pick
Version tested: 3.3.4
Description: Karen’s Replicator is a free backup and synchronization utility. It will backup files, directories, or entire drives from one drive/folder to another, including network drives. It also does scheduled backups, so you never need to remember to do a backup again.
This is a remarkably powerful program. Here’s what you need to know about it:
- Karen’s Replicator will allow you to choose source and backup destinations as you wish; it will not insist on replicating directory structure, as some other programs do.
- You can set the source and backup so that the latter will store all files from the original whether they currently exist there or not; i.e. deletion of file from source will not prompt deletion of same file that was previously backed up.
- Alternately, folders can mirror each other exactly, such that removal of a file from source will result in the same in destination
- You will discover that some folders you would want to mirror the originals, and others you would prefer to store everything that ever existed in the source directory. Karen’s Replicator will allow you to selectively apply these settings to specific folders or groups of folders.
- You can also set filters for the type of files that you do NOT want to back up. For example, you can tell Karen’s Replicator not to copy, say, shortcuts (.lnk ) or temp (.tmp) files. You can set these rules per folder or across the board.
- The program is set by default so that it will only copy changed files (will compare sizes and dates of last modification), but you could easily change these settings for each folder/group of folders if you want to.
- You can schedule Karen’s replicator to always run at a certain time each day or each hour or week or month (actually, you can even go down to minute level).
- First backups will typically take a while, in my experience, but after that it is a very fast process as the program only looks at files that have been changed.
Here’s what Karen’s Replicator will not do:
- The program copies files directly; it is not a zip backup utility (and all the better for it, in my opinion).
- It will not backup your files online to an FTP.
I’ve been looking for a good free backup utility for some time now, and I have definitely found it. I highly recommend this program.
Go to program home page for latest version.
I have this app scheduled to run daily to back up various files and folders to a network drive. Couldn’t do without it.
Referred to this package from a person at Regina Computer Exchange in Regina, SK, Canada
Help. I only want to see files that have changed. How do I do it?
THANKS
You should also check out the freeware Syncback. I like it more than Karen’s Replicator for one important reason. Whenever you run a sync or back-up, it will display a log of exactly what it will do. This is great especially when setting up a new task, so you can make sure it is doing what you want. That and it also provides allows for more control overall. There is one drawback - no Unicode support, which really sucks when you have a lot of foreign music that you want to back up! If you don’t have any files in Unicode though, I would highly recommend Syncback, even over Karen’s Replicator
Two programs that I use:
Pathsync, give preview what will be done. But dont remove empty folder.
DSynchronize, preview action shown in smaller window (hard to see), but will remove empty folder.
[...] for a backup tool that can schedule automated backups there are many freeware options such as Karen’s Replicator, Cobian Backup, Jaback, or [...]
Try rsync, a great command line utility that is part of cygwin. Cygwin is a free Linux command line for Windows.
rsync allows you to back up either to a local drive, or across a network. It is fast and highly configurable.
It’s very similar to robocopy and robocopy-gui from microsoft.
It would be great that this soft allow cold file copy, using shadow copy capabilities…
FileHamster… is the best choose for real time backup (shadow copy), including versioning. I suppose.
I’m looking for a utility that will have a “copy if newer” feature. I’ve used NexusFile & I thought it had such a feature but I can’t seem to it get it to do so now.
NexusFile is useful as is & since I haven’t seen it referenced on this site, at least in the File & Dir section, I thought I’d mention it.
As for the “copy if newer” feature I’m going to try Karen’s Replicator. If anyone could suggest another program…