Member Avatar for nathanpacker

Hey everyone, I hope this is in the right forum, I'm not sure where to place it. I'm just looking for a free app to backup my website to my local hard drive. I do alot of work on it, and there are times I wish I had previous versions to go back to when I screw things up. I found one called SiteShelter, and I like it, but I just have the demo version, which only lasts 30 days. I know there are probably plenty of free apps out there, and I can find some on Google, but there are so many to go through, I just wanted to hear what you all would recommend.
Thanks!

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A few practical, free ways to get automatic, scheduled FTP-file backups running from a home PC (database dumps were already discussed by , so these focus on the file side).

For Windows: use a free FTP/SFTP client that supports scripting, then run the script from Task Scheduler. A small WinSCP-style script will synchronize remote to local and can be invoked nightly. Example script:

option batch abort
option confirm off
open ftp://username:password@ftp.example.com/
synchronize local "C:\Backups\Website" "/public_html"
close
exit

Call it with winscp.com /script="C:\scripts\ftp-backup.txt" /log="C:\logs\winscp.log". See the WinSCP scripting docs (https://winscp.net/eng/docs/scripting) for secure session options and avoids-storing-password tips.

For Linux/macOS: prefer rsync over SSH/SFTP when the host supports it — it transfers only changes and preserves timestamps/permissions. Example:

rsync -avz --delete -e ssh user@host:/path/to/site/ /local/backups/site/

If only plain FTP is available, wget --mirror can pull an FTP tree, but it is less efficient than rsync and may not preserve metadata. See the wget manual (https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html) and rsync info (https://rsync.samba.org/).

Extra tips: rotate backups by adding a date suffix or compressing into a timestamped archive and keep a simple retention policy (e.g., keep last N copies). Always test at least one restore. Schedule runs during off-peak hours, enable logging so you can spot failed runs, and avoid exposing credentials in plain command lines (use saved sessions, SSH keys, or .netrc where appropriate). For a combined DB+files solution mentioned, scripted file backups plus your DB dump script can be coordinated in a single scheduled task so both are captured together.

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All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for carastas

yeah, i know the feeling, i use an app called sitevault, the good thing about it is that it also does the mysql backup and creates restore points for all the backups that it does.... i haven't been able to find a free tool to do mysql and restore points... and this one is quite steep...

george

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

maybe I am being too simplistic, I don't know, but why not just create a few simple queries in the mysql database and save the results to files on the local computer ? I know there are free mysql tools that will allow you to do that. I do it on my own XP computer, and I assume it might work on a remote database where you have administrative rights.

Member Avatar for nathanpacker

maybe I am being too simplistic, I don't know, but why not just create a few simple queries in the mysql database and save the results to files on the local computer ? I know there are free mysql tools that will allow you to do that. I do it on my own XP computer, and I assume it might work on a remote database where you have administrative rights.

That is a great idea to backup the MySql database, but I'm looking for a tool to actually back up the files on my FTP server.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Member Avatar for nathanpacker

*Bump*

Still looking for a good tool to schedule regular backups of my ftp folder to my hard drive. I have a SQL script that automatically backs up my database, but still need something to do automatic backups of my ftp files. I've found a few tools that cost $$, but nothing cheap. Any more ideas?

Member Avatar for MidiMagic

It would help to know what kind of host you are using, because the host determines what kind of scheduling you can do.

Maybe what you need is a script that activates when you log on, rather than at specific times.

Failing all else, you can drag the folder of the directory to a duplicate before you start. That's what I do.

Member Avatar for nathanpacker

It would help to know what kind of host you are using, because the host determines what kind of scheduling you can do.

Maybe what you need is a script that activates when you log on, rather than at specific times.

Failing all else, you can drag the folder of the directory to a duplicate before you start. That's what I do.

Well I don't need any type of script scheduling, because I've already found something for the database backup. (Which is a good thing, because you're right, my host, Globat.com, doesn't do any cron scheduling.) The best thing would be a good free app that runs in the background on my home pc, and at a certain time, scheduled by the app on my pc, logs on to my ftp site, downloads all the files, and places a copy of them on my hard drive. Same thing as if I were to run an FTP program, and download the whole folder manually. But I need something that will run automatically like in the middle of the night.

And like I said, I've found a few that would work, I just don't want to fork out $50 or $60 bucks for something I know someone has written a free app to do.

For example, one that I found that would be great, but costs around $50, is called SiteShelter. It actually does a great job because I can set it to do as many separate backups as I want. And it will do an incremental backup, but not overwrite the previous backups if I don't want it to. That way, I have several versions to go back to if I need.

I realize I might not find all those features in a free tool, but there's another decent one, around the same price called Handy Backup. Only it doesn't do the version thing, it just overwrites the old stuff, but still does an incremental backup, so it's pretty nice. I'm actually using the demo version of it right now.

Anyway, hope I didn't just confuse you more, but that's what I'm looking for. And yes, if it comes down to the fact that there just isn't a free one out there to do all this, then I'll fork out the money. But in my experience, there is loads of free software out there. I'm just having a hard time finding one like this.

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