Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Fast File Replicator for Windows

[apankrat]

This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years.

Link: https://bvckup2.com

I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons.

1. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it.

Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things.

It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too.

Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1].

2. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it.

That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there.

    --

By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it.

Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well.

    --

[1] https://bvckup2.com/wip

[apankrat]

This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years.

I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons.

1. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it.

Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things.

It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too.

Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1].

2. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it.

That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there.

    --

By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it.

Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well.

    --

[1] https://bvckup2.com/wip

[degenerate]

Thanks for creating Hamachi. I used it for older games that didn't have internet play, but had LAN functionality, with friends online. I never knew it was a solo project before LogmeIn bought it (and made it buggy/unreliable). What a joyfully simple program that was!

[AaronFriel]

Hey apankrat, thanks for your software! I used it for personal projects and considered it when I was doing full time IT work.

I didn't end up deploying it because for Hyper-V, performance of the differential scans was really poor, and IIRC there were some issues with cluster shared volumes.

Have you considered adding Windows' resilient change tracking support to bvckup2? I think with RCT and hooking into the API for backup quiescence, you could make this an enterprise grade backup product for SOHO IT needs.

[chosenken]

Just wanted to say I originally heard about Bvckup 2 when some one posted a link to your little IO Monitoring Tool [1]. I love running it now and then, always felt it was the best little tool to use drive usage! I feel that tool almost deserves its own little dedicated page, else I have to keep searching through the blog to find it.

Thanks for making Bvckup, its one of those tools I never knew I needed till I got it.

[1] https://bvckup2.com/wip/10042018

[basch]

I have a question, it might not have one concrete answer.

If my destination doesnt actually have a copy of the data, but only the metadata (onedrive sync with filespace freed up, nasuni with files purged from the cache) can bvckup write only the changed blocks, or for example, would the nasuni need to pull the file from the cloud master back into the cache before it can patch it with the delta? Maybe this is such a tech specific question it doesnt have an answer.

[ww520]

Nice software. Indie Windows software very much resonates with me. One question. How do you deal with Microsoft's requirement to sign the software? Is it expensive to get past the certification?

[pfarnsworth]

I'm very interested in this software. Does it do a bit check after copying to make sure that the copy can be read and is the exact same?

[giancarlostoro]

So what language is the UI coded in? What external dependencies are you using?

It looks nice and straight forward, so I give you your props for that.

[naikrovek]

Does this monitor filesystems for changes or does it get a file tree to compare against a previous file tree?

Or something else?

[mises]

I'm going to defer to you on this one, but my hunch is that NTFS being stupid and crusty is a limiting factor? In my experience, it's dog-slow (particularly on small files). Have you tested on ReFS and compared performance?

[dang]

Original Show HN from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405

[mruszczyk]

I'm trying to wrap my head around the use case here. I love to support well crafted native software so don't take this as a negative question. I often use a tool such as Arq or Veeam to create snapshots in time of a folder or set of folders that then get uploaded to a remote storage location or repository, to recover files or documents from that time. I also use cloud storage providers to keep a copy of data that I am working on in sync between devices.

I can't seem to tell but this product seems to be missing any additional features to really fill a role that I lack. It doesn't appear to make incremental copies of the data set to allow me to roll back in time, it does track deleted items but interim changes are not kept or tracked, so it's really just a capture of the state of the folder at last run time.

It's compared to robocopy but the tool assumes an empty initial destination directory, there's no facility for copying data into a directory with content in it already, so it's can't be used as a general file transfer tool.

It seems the best use case is for say transferring a directory of tarball dumps to a remote location over SMB?

[yboris]

I've been a huge fan of the UI design of bvckup for years -- the attention to detail is heartwarming.

[apankrat]

Thanks. Little OCD goes a long way.

[rkagerer]

1MB executable and a short, simple EULA. Wish more software came like that.

Given the lack of dependencies, have you considered offering an installer-free download? (The way Mark Russinovich does with SysInternals or Nir Sofer does with NirSoft tools?)

[apankrat]

I have, but never got around to doing it. All other utilities (Diskovery, CCSIOBench, etc.) are like that though already.

[tabulatouch]

Hi there, you have my upvote. I have been trying many solutions for a fast deltacopy-based file replication, and yours is really the best. I am a solopreneur too, living on my product in the last 9 years, somehow i "sensed" this little software gem was the child of a similar mind ;) All the best!

[lukevp]

What is your product, if you don't mind? I'm always eager to hear stories of entrepreneurs that aren't after VC funding or fast growth and are more about the freedom of having your own business and product.

[apankrat]

Cheers, thanks!

[ryanoshea]

I've used Bvckup 2 for years and found it the most reliable solution for PC-driven backup and replication jobs on Windows. It has a few high-level feature limitations that have bugged me (splitting a large folder backup across multiple smaller drives, for example), but it nails the core competencies better than anything else I've used.

[apankrat]

Re: splitting a backup across several drives - this has unique UI requirements that aren't compatible with bvckup2's core Engine/UI model. The engine runs all backups autonomously and the UI merely shows the progress. Conversely, split backups are interactive - eject A, insert B, etc.

[thrownaway954]

"If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them."

Do you have any comparisons and/or benchmarks. Doing the quick 10 second scan of your site doesn't list any. So how do I know this is worth $30 for personal use and a whopping $150 for servers when robocopy does just fine and is free for both?

[apankrat]

Fair point. Benchmarks are in the pipeline, will be adding them soon.

Re: how do you know - there's a 2 week trial just for that.

[AnonC]

I tried bvckup2 maybe a year or two ago. But I stopped using it because of a couple of license issues (?).

The thing is, my work machine is Windows but my employer doesn't have a good backup solution (other than OneDrive, which I don't like much because of its speed and restrictions). I wasn't sure if I could buy a personal license and use it to backup my work machine at my own cost, since said employer wouldn't pay for this or reimburse the cost. The personal license terms sounds strict to prohibit such use. I'm not sure if that's what was meant though. The new licensing model since June seems to address this, with no distinction on the kind of use.

But the second issue was the cost of the license itself. It just is high for me (due to currency and other issues), and I couldn't find any discount codes either. Now I see that the prices seem to have increased further since June 2019 (so it's beyond my reach). I don't recall the feature set of the personal license from before, but the new Basic version seems pretty basic, and seems to have too many differences with the Pro Workstation version. Narrowing that gap could make for better tiers, IMO.

[apankrat]

You are correct that you would've needed an Professional license for your case. Personal licenses were basically a 50% discounted option for backing up one's photos and music stash.

Re: pricing - it is what it is, sorry. We are trying to move towards pro IT use and the pricing reflects that. Basic license is not really meant for home use, but rather for certain very specific replication scenarios. In fact, I am considering removing it altogether, because it only serves to confuse simpler (read, non-IT) home users into thinking that it's meant for them, while it _is_ quite restricted.

[agumonkey]

The website and application layout gives a sense of ultra high grade solidity. The swiss flag doesn't seems out of place here.

[Xamayon]

Does this support backing up many TB many million file data sets to multiple smaller target disks? I've been looking for a utility which can handle filling a disk with as many complete files as possible, then allowing a new disk to be inserted to continue.

This used to work great with tape utilities, but every hdd based copy/backup utility I've tried assumes your backups will always fit on a single target disk. Most also fail miserably after a few hundred thousand files, so it's nice to see this one supports millions sanely.

[apankrat]

No, it doesn't support this type of usage. It's a very niche scenario and there are some hairy usability issues with it, especially post-backup.

[clausok]

I really like your landing page. FYI: on the feature comparison page, when you expand a row with the '+', the 'More on this...' links are not working yet.

[apankrat]

Thanks for the FYI, should be working as expected now.

[mehrdadn]

Does the tool replicate NTFS extended attributes, reparse points, short file names, hardlinks, timestamps, and other metadata I can't think of at the moment correctly?

[apankrat]

It replicates timestamps, attributes, DACL, SACL, group and owner info, as well as alternate file streams. Replication of some of these is off by default though.

It can follow symlinks, reparse and mount points, but doesn't replicate them.

It does not know about hardlinks.

[justsomeguy3591]

I used this back when I was on Windows - an absolute delight to use. As a developer I hope to someday create something as useful and well-designed as this tool!

[apankrat]

Thanks, it's a very nice compliment.

[mogpt]

I’ve been very happily using Bvckup for my personal and work files for a number of years now. Thanks very much for your pristine work.

[apankrat]

Glad you like it :)

[b3lvedere]

"Support for SAMBA quirks" As someone who has worked with a lot of NAS products, i can relate to this a lot.

[boromi]

How does this integrate with a synology nas ? I've been thinking about picking up a synology nas.

[chosenken]

I have been using Bvckup 2 to backup primarily to my Synology Nas. It correctly identifies that the destination directory is a SAMBA v3.1 mount, and treats it as NTFS.

I actually love using it for my Synology as it has the ability to do Delta Copying. Some of my folders contain VM's and VeraCrypt drives, and it is very fast when it comes to sending delta copies. It still has to read the file on the destination to determine what to write, but that only becomes apparent on large files. I think you may lose some features since it is a mounted network drive(mainly limitations to SAMBA), but I have had no issues with it.

Scanning remote files is fast, if the contents or timestamps haven't changed I've seen it scan over 600K files in a couple of minuets (duplicacy backup, in the process of moving to a new hard drive and need to store it temporarily on the Nas).

[apankrat]

It works really well with Synology boxes. It also has quite a few Synology-specific tweaks, including support for their weird quirk of rounding up file timestamps to the nearest second and then subtracting a millisecond from it.

[dmitripopov]

Hello from a fellow Windows mISV! I'd like to say that there are only two of us remaining, but RSDN forum "Shareware and business" is still alive and kicking.

[apankrat]

There are quite a few small ISVs out there. From the top of my head and in areas related to my own - Arq backup, SoftPerfect, Syncovery. I don't think Macrium and Glasswire are terribly big either. Ditto for 2BrightSparks. HexRays. Boatload of smaller shops in the 3D tools/plugins domain. Lots and lots of examples, they are just hard to notice because they look and feel bigger than they actually are.

[kup0]

I love the focus on the UI/UX and performance. Looks like a solid, highly-efficient application, something that is sorely missing (or at least hard to find) on Windows

[yodon]

Does the website say whether it can be used for backup to S3/Azure/GCP/etc? I looked and couldn't find either yes or no.

[apankrat]

Bvckup 2 operates at the file system level. It has no API-level integration with cloud storage providers.

It can be used to backup onto any virtual drives emulated by the cloud client software, which is, obviously, not the same thing, but a workaround.

Direct cloud storage integration is on the dev plan, and it's possible it'll be a separate (sister) product.