💾🐈‍⬛ FloppyCat Simple Backup Utility

Simple high-performance utility for creating and validating checksums-based backups with full multiprocessing support

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😋 Support project

Support the project by buying and listening to my music 🎵

• 🟦 Bandcamp
• 🟧 SoundCloud

Or message me if you would like to donate 💰

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🚀 Performance

Test #1. First backup

Test conditions:

• Backup entire /home/$USER directory excluding .wine (~171.1 GiB) + external ~10.6 GiB MicroSD card (audio files) to the empty external F2FS (LUKS) SSD drive
• ~181.7 GiB total
• Checksum algorithm: MD5
• Workload profile: High
  • 9 / 12 processes on Intel i7-9750H
• Create empty directories + generate tree.txt after backup

Result:

• Total time: ~17 minutes
• Files viewed: 924639, directories viewed: 153021
• Checksums calculated: 924468, errors: 0
• Files and directories copied: 924460, errors: 0
• Files and directories deleted: 0, errors: 0
• Directories created: 124569, errors: 0

Test #2. Update backup

Test conditions:

• Change some files and backup again entire /home/$USER directory excluding .wine to the external F2FS (LUKS) SSD drive with existing backup
• Checksum algorithm: MD5
• Workload profile: High
  • 9 / 12 processes on Intel i7-9750H
• Create empty directories + generate tree.txt after backup

Result:

• Total time: ~6 min
• Files viewed: 1848965, directories viewed: 305398
• Checksums calculated: 924487, errors: 0
• Files and directories copied: 386, errors: 0
• Files and directories deleted: 24, errors: 0
• Directories created: 20, errors: 0

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❓ Get started

1. Download executable from releases or build it yourself (see 🏗️ Build from source section)
2. Add directories or files you want to backup by pressing + button in Files / directories to backup section
3. Select path using 📄+ or 📁+ buttons or type it manually inside File / directory path to backup field
   1. The priority of files / directories is from top to bottom. Use ⬆️ / ⬇️ buttons to move input files / directories
   2. If you want to exclude a file / directory from the backup, check Skip
   3. The 🗑️ button will remove the current path from the input data (it will not be copied to the backup)
4. Select output (backup) directory by pressing Browse button or type path manually near Where to save backup:
5. Change settings if you need:

   1. Follow symlinks - If set, during tree generation (before calculating checksums) and while copying files symbolic links will be followed (if supported by the system). Without this flag, symlinks will be created inside backup. Default: Unchecked

   2. Delete entries from backup according to input data - If set, those files inside the existing backup that don't exist in the input paths will be deleted. Without this flag, files from the backup will never be deleted. Default: Checked

      1. Delete skipped entries - If set, files in skipped paths will also be deleted from the existing backup. Without this flag, if files exist even in the skipped paths, they will not be deleted. Default: Unchecked

   3. Create empty directories - If set, all empty folders in the input paths will also be created in the backup. Without this flag, only non-empty directories will be copied. Default: Checked

   4. Generate tree.txt file after backup - If set, upon completion of the backup, a tree.txt file will be created with the following content:

      doc/
      ├── _static/
      │   ├── embedded/
      │   │   ├── deep_file
      │   │   └── very/
      │   │       └── deep/
      │   │           └── folder/
      │   │               └── very_deep_file
      │   └── less_deep_file
      ├── checksums.md5
      ├── some_file
      └── tree.txt
      

      Default: Checked

   5. Checksum algorithm: - Select an algorithm for checksum calculating. Default: MD5

   6. Workload profile: - Select the impact of the backup on the system. The higher the value, the more CPU cores will be used. Default: Normal

   7. Recalculate current backup checksum - If set, the checksum of the existing backup will be recalculated each time. Without this value, the existing checksum file will be used for comparing existing data with input data and for final checksums.* file Default: Unchecked

6. Press Start button to start the backup process. Upon completion of the backup, you will get a copy of your data and a file with their checksums (as well as some useful statistics and a tree.txt file, if Generate tree.txt file after backup option was enabled)
7. If after some time, you need to check whether the data in the backup has become corrupted, specify your backup directory using Where to save backup: and press Validate button. The checksums of all files inside the existing backup will be recalculated and compared with the existing file. At the output you will get statistics with the error rate and some other useful information

NOTE: It is recommended to select an output folder (where to save the backup) on the external drive. Select your valuable data as input and periodically use FloppyCat to update your backup!

NOTE: When backup home directory or system files, run FloppyCat as root, because some directories may not be readable by the current user!

🏗️ Build from source

1. Install Python 3.10 / 3.11 or higher (not tested)
2. Download source code
3. Create venv python -m venv venv / python3 -m venv venv / python3.10 -m venv venv
4. Activate venv source venv/bin/activate (for Linux) / venv\Scripts\activate.bat (for Windows)
5. Install requirements pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade
6. Run pyinstaller FloppyCat.spec to build executable

NOTE: if you want to enable logging to console (STDOUT), pass --enable_console_logging argument while running FloppyCat

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📝 TODO

• Improve calculation of remaining time
• Add data compression
• Add data encryption
• Add dark theme
• Improve performance of checksum comparison and tree.txt generation

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✨ Contribution

• Anyone can contribute! Just create a pull request

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🚧 P.S. This project is still under development and may have many bugs

• The author of the project is not responsible for any damage caused to your data / CPU 🙃