Langmeier Backup

Work with tasks

You will find the term 'task' many times in this manual. Let me quickly introduce this term. A task consists out of one or more directories. The combination of these directories is called a backup task. On the following illustration you see a backup task that will backup two directories:

To save the task choose the menu "File" >"Save task as ...":

With the appearing dialog choose a folder and a name for your backup task. If you start Langmeier Backup the last edited / opened backup task will be shown.

If you want to add a directory to a task, click on the button "Add..." or press Ctrl+H.

With the checkboxes in the listing you can decide whether to backup a path or not. When you click on "start backup " all the checked paths will be backuped and the others will be skipped. If you press Ctrl+A all the paths will be checked.

see: Edit a new directory

Differential - or full backup?

If you check "Differential Backup Affects only changed files" you can decide if you want to backup all files or only the modified files since the last backup process. In general you don't have to backup the not modified files again. So in most cases it is the best to leave this checkbox activated.
On the other hand it is recommended deactivate the checkbox, the first time you backup a certain directory.

Has a File been changed? - The Influence of Archive Bits

The windows operating system uses so called "archive bits" to tell the backup application if the files were modified since the last backup. The operation system knows which files that have been changes and set automatically an archive bit to recognize these files. On the other side the backup application removes this bit after the backup task has completed successfully.

You can even set the archive bit manually. The following example shows how the archive bit can set manually Windows XP®. Right click on a file and choose properties. Then click on “Advanced..” and activate or deactivate the property “File is ready for archiving”.

Only check archive bit for the selection of data that you want to backup.

If you choose a differential backup only the files that have changed since the last backup will be saved again. By default the application verifies if the file is already backuped and will backup the file if it is not the case. If you check the option "Only check the archive-bit from the operating system." only the archive bit is regarded. In this case Langmeier Backup application won’t check if a file is missing on your backup device. Only use this option if Langmeier Backup is the only tool you use to archive data.

Note: If you have the option "Only check the archive-bit from the operating system." checked and will backup data to multiple devices, Langmeier Backup won't be able to save all files. To avoid this behavior you can backup your files from the first backup device to the second.
Hint: The differential backup is faster if you activate this option.

Further options:

Files that always have to be stored historicized

Even save open files