Real-time backups with Personal Backup Monitor (PbMon - Version 2.4)

Sometimes you may wish to backup files modified during your daily work as immediately as possible and not wait until the next scheduled backup. For this, the directories containing the affected files must be permanently monitored to start the backup immediately after a change is recognized. For this purpose, I have developed the program Personal Backup File Monitor (PbMon). It is easy to use and is part of the install package of Personal Backup 6.

The program can monitor up to 32 user-defined directories. For each directory you can select which changes should be monitored (e.g. filename and/or timestamp). In addition you can specify a filter (e.g. *.odt or *.txt) to monitor only files matching the filter condition. Each directory to be monitored can be associated with a special backup task which should be created beforehand with Personal Backup. The program will check periodically at adjustable time intervals, e.g. every 30 seconds or 5 minutes, whether there have been changes in one of the selected directories and will then start the associated backup task automatically in the background.

Note: The Windows function ReadDirectoryChangesW used for monitoring unfortunately has limitations. Although it is possible to monitor also subdirectories, in contrast to the root directory there is no feedback as to which files have been changed, so that the filtering described above does not work. Therefore the monitoring of the program is limited to each specified root directory unless individual subdirectories to be monitored are specifically added to the list.

Settings

By clicking the button Add directory you can add any directory to the list of directories to be monitored (top left in the figure). By clicking Remove directory an entry can be deleted from the list. After selecting one of the listed directories, you can configure the associated monitoring options:

• Monitor these changes: Filenames and File last write-time are preselected. As a result, a data backup will start automatically each time a filename is created or changed or a file timestamp has changed. In addition, you can choose to start the backup when file attributes, file sizes and/or file creation-time have been changed.
• Files to be monitored: By specifying a filter you can select which files should be monitored. Clicking the button will open a filter dialog (below right) for editing the filter conditions. The syntax of the text patterns is described here.
• Backup task to be started: Select the task created beforehand with Personal Backup for backing up the selected directory. It is strongly recommended you backup only the associated directory. This will ensure that the automatically-triggered backup will finish quickly. A backup task designed to backup larger volumes once a day is not suitable for this purpose.
  Buttons: Using the buttons at the right of the text box, you can can select the task in a dialog and edit it. Clicking the most right button will display the associated backup log.
• Minimum backup interval: The shortest time interval between two backups can be set between 5 s and 360 min. At the end of this interval, the program checks whether there were changes in one or more selected directories. If so, the backups associated with the affected directories will be started.

More options

• No progress window during backup: The backup runs completely in the background. No status window will be displayed afterwards.
• Show user prompt on errors: If errors occurred during backup, for example a not connected external drive, the user will be prompted.
• Start on logon: The program will be started automatically on logon
• Keep running in background: After start of monitoring, the program window will be closed. The program continues running in background. A small icon is displayed in the Windows notification area. By clicking this icon, all active monitoring is displayed. Optionally, this can also be used to reopen the program window.

Menu

Click on the Hamburger button at the lower right to open the menu:

• Run Personal Backup - Start Personal Backup to edit a backup task (F9)
• Reset window to default size - The size of the dialog window will be reset to its predefined size.
• Help - Show program help (F1)
• Version info - Show the current version of the program

Start and stop monitoring

After configuring the above settings, you can start monitoring by clicking the button with the blue arrow. All directories in the list having a check mark will be monitored until the stop button is clicked to cancel this.
If a change to a selected file in one of the selected directories has been recognized, the filename will be listed at the bottom left. The leading number (01, 02, etc.) points to the entry in the directory list. A bracketed suffix behind the filename indicates the type of the change: A = new, R = deleted, M = changed, O = old name or N = new name. The time remaining until the next scheduled backup is displayed to the right and the indicator below will blink when the backup starts.

Note: Changes to the settings will apply only after stopping and restarting monitoring.

If the program is running in the background (see above), right-clicking on the small icon in the Windows notification area opens a context menu that can be used to stop and restart monitoring.