Creating backups of your work is critical in a professional and even personal environment. Data loss can occur at any time, and people are always grateful to have up-to-date backups of their work. This batch application, created by Karanveer Chouhan makes it as simple as right-clicking in your folder and pressing backup. In this article we will guide you through installing and using the application.

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INSTALLING THE APPLICATION

You can get the app from our GitHub page. Once you have downloaded this, you should have four files: Backup.bat, RunAS admin.bat, Settings.txt and 7za.exe (the last one in the files\ folder, as it is a dependency). The main application is backup.bat, and the RunAS batch file allows you to create a shortcut via the explorer shell. The Settings.txt file is where you will store the FTP server settings. Also, the FTP application uses 7zip to compress your backup before sending it to your FTP server. If 7zip is installed already, you can remove the portable one.

INITIALIZING OUR SETTINGS

Now, in the settings file you will find the following:

# All Lines after '#' are comments

_FTPid=xxx
_Port=xxx
_User=xxx
_Password=xxx

_RemoteBackupPath=/_Backup


# Do not touch these settings...
_Mode=Binary

The settings are pretty straightforward for you to fill in. You will have to to specify the FTPid (or IP address), the FTP Port, the Username and Password, and the folder the backups will be placed in on your FTP server. Once you have filled those in, you are ready to proceed with the next steps.

CREATING A SHORTCUT

In order to make our backups easier to start, we will run the RunAS batch file. It will need administrator privileges, so that it can create a shell shortcut for our backup, so remember to run it as Administrator. Once this is done, you should see a shortcut on your right-click menu like this:

This will run the main Backup application in the context of our current directory. This means any folder we are currently viewing in explorer will be stored in the backup folder. Do remember, the FTP folder is what we specified in the settings.txt file.

BACKING UP OUR FILES

At this point, it is as simple as going to your project directory, right clicking and pressing Backup. Should there not be any FTP errors, your files should be stored in your FTP server in a few seconds or minutes depending on the size of your project. If your FTP server is on a private network, ensure that your firewall is configured correctly to accept FTP requests.

You can easily view your FTP backups using an application such as FileZilla, or using the web manager that your FTP host provides (most do). If you would like to test the Backup application but don’t have a remote FTP server, DriveHQ is my personal recommendation for free testing.

CONCLUSION

This application is very useful for developers. I recommend using it if you are going to be working on any size projects. Karanveer and Anic did a great job designing this, and I hope that more features can be added in the future. I hope you enjoyed this article, if you have any questions or comments feel free to share them below. Thank you for reading.