hardBackup: Dirvish Disk-Based Backup for Windows
hardBackup is a disk-based backup solution for Windows systems built on well-established open-source components. It combines Dirvish, rsync, OpenSSH, and Cygwin to provide efficient, secure, and space-conscious backups on Windows.
The solution supports a rotating backup scheme that maintains multiple backup images over time. Identical files across different backup generations are stored only once on disk, reducing storage usage. File transfers are optimised by sending only changed data and are secured using encrypted SSH connections.
Dirvish is a fast, disk-based, rotating backup system that maintains complete filesystem images with unattended creation and automatic expiration. A Dirvish backup vault effectively acts as a time-based archive of data.
rsync provides efficient data transfer by synchronising only file differences, minimising network usage. Secure transport is handled by OpenSSH, while Cygwin enables these Unix-oriented tools to run on Windows.
By bundling these components, hardBackup offers a practical way to deploy a proven, image-based backup strategy on Windows without requiring a separate Unix or Linux system.
Project lifetime: Jul 2006 - Sep 2010