Not a sync folder. A versioned history of every drive.
File sync gives you the latest copy of a file — including the latest encrypted copy, if something got to it first. Comsky Backup keeps every restore point separately, so there is always a version from before.
A whole drive is a valid source.
Point a policy at C:\ and D:\ and the agent walks the tree and takes what it finds — minus a built-in exclusion list of Windows scratch files. The accounts data, the shared folders, the user profiles and the application directory nobody documented are in scope without anyone having to remember them. Or name specific folders instead, with your own exclusions on top.
Open and locked files are read through a shadow copy.
A backup does not have to wait for everyone to go home. Each run asks Windows for a shadow copy of the volume and reads the files out of that, so a database or a mailbox that is mid-write is read as it stood at one instant rather than being skipped. If a run finds a shadow already stuck from a crashed one, it clears it and carries on.
Schedules and retention you actually control.
A policy sets the frequency — hourly inside a window, daily, weekly or monthly — the compression, the exclusions, and how long restore points survive, in days and in number. It then applies to every device attached to it. Change the policy and the whole group follows. No per-machine scheduled task to maintain, and no cron job that quietly stopped firing in March.
Only what changed leaves the machine.
Repeated content inside a machine’s own history is stored once, and after the first run only new and changed content is uploaded — a nightly backup of a server that changed by 2 GB moves roughly 2 GB, not the whole drive again. The console shows the real split for every run: scanned, after dedup, after compression, uploaded. It is a measurement, not a vendor ratio.
Excluded by default, before you configure anything:
When the shadow-copy service will not start.
A backup product that only describes the good path is describing a demo. Here is what happens on the machine where Windows will not give the agent a shadow copy at all.
The run still goes ahead without one. Files that were locked at that moment are skipped, listed by name against the job, and the run is flagged rather than filed as a clean success. The restore point is badged in the picker, so when you come to restore from it you can see which runs excluded locked files and how many files a run could not read.
A stuck shadow is cleared
If a run finds a shadow copy already stuck from a crashed earlier run, the agent clears it and carries on rather than failing and waiting for a person.
Skipped files are named
Not a count in a log somewhere. The job carries the list, so the question of what did not make it in has an answer you can read.
A flagged run is not a green tick
A run that had to skip files is flagged. A run that stored materially less than the pre-scan expected is flagged too. Both are visible in the console without opening anything.
Set it once, and the whole group follows.
A policy is where the frequency, the sources, the compression, the exclusions and the retention live. Attach devices to it and they inherit all of it — and two policies can cover the same folder on the same machine with different retention.
Two policies can cover the same folder on the same machine with different retention — hourly points kept for a fortnight, and a nightly one from that same folder kept for a year. They share one deduplicated repository, so the second schedule costs very little to keep.
Scanned, deduplicated, compressed, uploaded.
Four numbers per run, measured from the job rather than quoted from a brochure. This is what a nightly run on a file server looks like after the first one has been and gone.
Deduplicated per device
Repeated content inside a machine’s own history is stored once. The second policy pointed at the same folder shares that repository, which is why a second schedule costs very little to keep.
Interrupted, not failed
A run cut short by a dropped connection, a sleeping machine or the agent updating itself is recorded as interrupted and resumes from its last checkpoint instead of starting the upload again.
A measurement, not a ratio
The console shows the real split for every run. Nobody has to trust a figure from a data sheet about how much a backup product will compress your particular files.
About what does and does not go in.
Can I back up a whole drive, or only named folders?
Either. A backup source can be a whole volume or a folder you name. Pointed at a volume, the agent walks the tree and takes what it finds, minus a built-in exclusion list of Windows scratch files — the page file, the hibernation file, the recycle bin, browser caches, *.tmp and node_modules. You can layer your own exclusions on top of that per policy.
What happens to files that are open when the backup runs?
Each run asks Windows for a volume shadow copy and reads out of that, so a database or mailbox that is mid-write is captured as it stood at one instant rather than skipped. If a crashed earlier run left a shadow stuck, the agent clears it and carries on. If the shadow-copy service cannot start on that machine at all, the run still goes ahead without one — locked files are skipped, listed by name against the job, and the run is flagged rather than filed as a clean success.
How long are restore points kept?
As long as the policy says, expressed both as an age in days and as a count of points. A point is only removed once it is outside both. The expiry itself runs on the server with a credential the endpoint never sees, so nothing on the machine decides when its own history ends.
Can the same folder be in two policies?
Yes, and it is a reasonable thing to do. Hourly points kept for a fortnight and a nightly point from that same folder kept for a year is a common shape. They share one deduplicated repository, so the second schedule costs very little to keep.
Is this a disk image?
No. It is file-level backup — including every file on a drive, if that is what you point it at. There is no volume image, no recovery media and no bare-metal restore. If a one-click whole-machine rebuild is the requirement, you need an imaging product instead.
Every device name, policy and figure on this page is demo data.
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