To protect your important files and avoid losing them, you need to create at least one backup of them. That means you have to create a copy of those files on a relatively safe location, like renting a cloud storage service, or copying the files on another data support you own yourself (kept separately of your computer) such as Hard disks, SSD's, USB memory sticks, tape drives, DVD's, etc.
To back up your files you can employ a dedicated program to make the backup for you, or you can do it manually using "synchronize directories" from Double Commander (free GPL license) or Total Commander (shareware).
Synchronizing a folder structure between your home computer, work computer and external Hard Disk Drive or USB stick, is most useful when you have a bunch of files and folders you modify frequently and want to have the latest version on all devices. It also gives you instant access to your backed up files. We will focus on this.
Once you have a backup storage drive like an external HDD for example, you just need to copy the folders with your important files on it and keep it safe. This is your first backup.
The problem arise when you frequently add/delete/modify many files in folders/subfolders and want to update the backup with the latest changes. To simply delete all the files from the external HDD and copy them again is counter productive because probably most of them remain unchanged.
So, to add/delete/modify only the added or changed files, use Double Commander. It can be downloaded from:
- the official site https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io
- or from a mirror site like Softpedia https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/Double-Commander.shtml
- or Major Geeks https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/double_commander.html
You can install it in your system or simply use the portable version.
After the program is installed and running, to synchronize your folders you need to open and select on Double Commander’s two window, the same folders on both drives you want to synchronize, in my example F:\ and H:\ and then from the menu: Commands > Synchronize dirs.
This will bring you to a window that looks like that:
You need to select “only selected” and “subdirs” and to show everything except the equal files. Then hit “Compare”.
Here the options are straightforward. Since this selection will show you only the modified files, you can easy replace the old files with the new ones on the backup drive, or if you know one of your newer file is wrongly modified, you can right-click on it and change the copy direction with “select for copying → (left to right)” to restore the older file from the backup.
Or delete files you don’t need. Or deselect files you don’t want to be synchronized. Once all these operations are done, hit “Synchronize” and the copying/overwriting process will start. At the end it will show you again the differences between the two synchronized folders (if there are any).
This should be it. If something is not clear, please write on the comments. Good luck with your backups.
