A survey of personal backup solutions

Over the years, I have used many methods to maintain backup copies of data. The first method obviously was to maintain a copy of each file. Then I started storing compressed versions of the data and using a timestamp for each backup. Just as enterprises have had to address the Big Data explosion, I too have not been immune to the problem of large volumes of data. Due to data volumes and the frequency of changes, the timestamp method of maintaining backups is not practical. Additionally, each zip archive ends up with one copy of the file and when a particular copy is needed, it is difficult to figure out the most relevant copy.

I also tried using version-control software like SVN. The problem with version control is that it’s sub-optimal for binary data. In other words, version control is best suited for text files, where versions are stored using the ‘difference’ method. In the case of binary files, most such solutions simply copy the binary file into the repository, as