Backup tool to merge based on date

[DesertNomad]

My workflow produces files that get backed up to an external RAID which maintains an archive that is quite static. I have two RAIDs... a larger online one that holds everything and a smaller one that gets moved to long-term storage once full.

I am looking for a backup tool that can copy files from a source, to a destination, maintaining the same hierarchical structure, but only copy files with a creation date after a given date so that only new files will be moved to a new drive since an older drive already contains the older files. CCC is not able to do this which is what I have been using to sync the source and destination/backup.

Is there a Mac app that can backup, preserve the folder structure, but only copy files based on a date criteria?

 

[MindMike]

ChronoSync is what you're looking for.

 

[DesertNomad]

I have looked at that - it has an installer which I don't really like. Will it work as just an app on demand without installing any background stuff? I have a test machine that I'll play with it on. It doesn't look quite as polished as CCC.

 

[HDFan]

I am looking for a backup tool that can copy files from a source, to a destination, maintaining the same hierarchical structure, but only copy files with a creation date after a given date so that only new files will be moved to a new drive since an older drive already contains the older files. CCC is not able to do this which is what I have been using to sync the source and destination/backup.

So you have two drives, one is, say, blank and the other has older files? You only want files which are newer than the copy on the old drive copied to the new drive?

ChronoSync is what you're looking for.

Is that possible? The usual configuration is to link two drives, and update the drive with newer files as they appear on the master drive.

Will it work as just an app on demand without installing any background stuff?

ChronoSync loads a helper app on startup. It is intended to keep drives in synch automatically without intervention, so it requires a background process.

 

[DesertNomad]

I guess I wasn't clear. I had an 8TB drive that slowly filled up over the years (two of them actually as they are mirrors of each other). I have now transferred the data to a new 16TB drive and bought a new 8TB drive to act as a backup. When I back up now, I only want to backup data that is newer than that which is already stored on the two now decommissioned archived/mirrored 8TB drives.

 

[HDFan]

So you have:

1. One master drive
2. One 16 TB backup drive with old backups
3. One 8 TB backup drive for new backups

If a file on the master drive is changed

a. if the updated file exists on the 16 TB drive do nothing
b. If it does not exist on the 16 TB drive, or it has an older version, copy the file to the 8 TB drive

Never heard of any commercial program that would do this.

 

[DesertNomad]

The files, once stored, do not change. So currently I have a live 16TB drive that is half full, an 8TB drive that is full and in storage (and has the current contents of the 16tb drive) and an empty 8tb drive. As I add files to the live 16tb drive, I want to copy those to the (currently empty) 8TB drive.

 

[ssmed]

Carbon Copy Cloner would likely do what you want. You can pick folders rather than whole drives. Your folder structure would need to be such that the older files were archived and not included.

 

[DesertNomad]

The problem is that all the files on the master drive are merged into common places. This should really be a simple problem. My master drive is large (16tb) and has basically unchanging data on it as it acts like an archive. I want to back it up on to a series of smaller drives. All files prior to (for example) 10/1/2020 are on 8tb drive "A" and all files after 10/1/2020 should be a different 8tb drive "B". Back in the 90s there were backup tools that would back your hard drive up onto multiple CDRWs and keep track of which files were new and still needed to be archived.