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What’s New in SyncBack V12
Password managers. SyncBackPro can now take the passwords and keys your profiles use from 1Password, Dashlane or Bitwarden, so a password you change once in your password manager is picked up by every profile. There is a step-by-step guide for each one further down.
Password Backup. If you lose the password that encrypts your backups, nobody can open them, and 2BrightSparks cannot recover lost passwords. Password Backup, new in SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro as part of Insider Access, lists the passwords that protect your backups and profiles, such as Zip encryption passwords, cloud encryption keys and profile passwords. It reminds you to keep a safe copy one day after a password is first used, then every 90 days. After you confirm your Windows sign-in you can show or copy a password, print a recovery sheet, or test yourself to make sure you still remember it. Reminders are also added to the log and the emailed log, so you see them even on a computer that runs unattended. Your passwords never leave your computer. Watch the video
Password generator and checker. Every edition now has a button next to its password boxes that generates a strong password, or checks how strong an existing one is and, if you choose, whether it has turned up in a known data breach. Watch the video
PAR2 recovery data. With Insider Access, SyncBackPro can create PAR2 recovery data for backups on a local drive or network share. If a backup file is damaged later, the recovery data can find the damage and repair the file where it stands, without needing the original. Watch the video
Groups. A profile can now be set so that it only runs as part of a group or group queue, and is never started on its own by mistake (watch the video). You can drag and drop profiles in a group to change their order (not in a parallel group), and when you export a group you can choose to export all of its profiles with it, which you can also do from the command line with -exportgroup. In SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro, a profile in a group queue set to Rescan now does a full rescan, and command line parameters such as -full and -source given to a group queue are now passed on to its profiles.
Faster. Verifying files is up to about 4.5 times faster, and SHA-256 hashing, used by file integrity checking, up to about 13 times faster. If you have a lot of profiles and schedules, SyncBack now restores its window faster after being minimized and opens the profile configuration window faster, and SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro close much faster: in one test with 347 profiles, from over 11 minutes to 26 seconds.
Safer. A profile no longer runs if a variable in a critical place, such as the destination folder, cannot be expanded. In SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro, a failed or stopped download from an FTP, SFTP, cloud, SyncBack Touch or MTP location no longer leaves a half-written file, and no longer deletes the existing file it was replacing. In SyncBackPro, interrupted SFTP uploads and downloads now carry on from where they stopped instead of starting the file again (with the Chilkat and DevArt engines).
These are only the highlights. The version history lists every change.
HashOnClick V3.1.11.0
HashOnClick, our free tool for calculating and comparing file hashes from File Explorer, has been updated. It adds four new algorithms: BLAKE3 and BLAKE2b-512, two modern cryptographic hashes that are very fast, plus CRC32C and CRC64. The CRC64 is the same one that 7-Zip and xz show, so you can check a file against the value those tools report. MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 now use the cryptography built into Windows, which makes them much faster, with SHA-256 up to 15 times faster. The command-line tool has matching switches for the new algorithms, files with very long paths are now hashed correctly by every algorithm, and there are several reliability fixes.
Download HashOnClick
HashOnClick version history
Using 1Password, Dashlane and Bitwarden with SyncBackPro
Backup profiles are full of credentials: SFTP passwords, cloud account passwords and the passwords that encrypt your Zip files. When each profile keeps its own copy, every password change means editing every profile that uses it. SyncBackPro can now take those credentials from 1Password, Dashlane or Bitwarden instead. A profile holds a reference to the item, never the password itself, so you change a password once in your password manager and every profile picks it up on its next run. Each of our three step-by-step guides covers keeping your backup credentials separate from everything else, connecting the password manager to SyncBackPro, and the limits worth checking first.
Using 1Password with SyncBackPro
Using Dashlane with SyncBackPro
Using Bitwarden with SyncBackPro
PAR2 Recovery Data Explained
A backup file that was perfect when it was written can pick up a damaged sector, or a few flipped bits, while it sits on a drive for a year. Its name, size and date do not change, so nothing looks wrong until the day you need it. PAR2 is a long-established, open answer to that problem. It stores a small amount of extra data alongside a file, and that data can later find the damage and rebuild the damaged parts without needing the original. This article explains where PAR2 came from, how it works, what it can and cannot do, and how to use it in SyncBackPro, where it is an Insider Access feature for backups on a local drive or network share.
PAR2 Recovery Data Explained: Repairing Damaged Backups in Place
The zxcvbn Password Strength Algorithm
Most password rules ask for an uppercase letter, a digit and a symbol. P@ssw0rd passes all of them, and it is one of the first passwords an attacker tries. zxcvbn, created at Dropbox, measures what actually matters: how many guesses an attacker who knows how people choose passwords would need. This article explains how it works and where it falls short, and how the new password check in SyncBack uses it entirely on your own computer, together with an optional check against known data breaches that never sends your password anywhere.
The zxcvbn Algorithm: Measuring Password Strength the Way an Attacker Would
How to Back Up to Multiple Destinations
A single backup protects you against a single failure. Keeping copies in two or three places, such as a NAS for fast restores and a cloud service off-site, is much safer, and in SyncBack it is done with a group that has one profile for each destination. This step-by-step guide shows how to hold the source folder and filters once, as group variables, so that every destination follows them, and how to avoid the mistakes that are easy to make along the way. Group variables need SyncBackSE or SyncBackPro, and backing up to cloud services needs SyncBackPro.
How to Back Up to Multiple Destinations with SyncBack
What is SyncBack?
If you know someone who keeps meaning to set up a backup, this is the article to send them. It explains in plain language what SyncBack does, the difference between Backup, Mirror and Synchronization, how profiles and groups work, how a Simulated Run shows you every change before anything is copied or deleted, how to make backups run themselves and how to get your files back. It finishes with a comparison of SyncBackFree, SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro, and five steps to a complete, automatic, tested backup.
What is SyncBack? Backup and Sync Software for Windows Explained
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