I've been looking for a good file-based backup program, though I still rely on disk/partition imaging for backups that are near 100% guaranteed to restore and boot successfully. My main interest is in using strarc to back up/restore BestCrypt/VeraCrypt encrypted volumes. I can simply mount the volume, restore or back up, then dismount, probably from a PE environment or similar.
I had previously considered Windows-based rsync variations for this task, it works great on Linux but has too many downsides in Windows. Being able to back up and restore a file/directory's various attributes/permissions/ownership/etc is important. I would also like to be able to cover the targets of NTFS junctions, symbolic links, and hardlinks, without actually following them and pulling data from outside the volume into the backup.
Is there a possibility of being able to run from Linux? It would be useful to be able to perform operations on Windows and its' associated volumes.
What about the disk signature, as Wonko mentioned? How should it be handled? Is it safe to assume I'm safe as long as I dont format the volume, restore it, then try to boot it? I have certain volume lettering associations that I need to remain intact, as many of my installed programs "remember" where they are. And my Users volume, which I separated from the C drive with a unattend script, is also dependent on its' letter being the same.
I would also like to be able to restore encrypted volumes without having to decrypt/encrypt/reencrypt after every restore. And not having to back up free and used space. CloneZilla etc can handle this, but it does an exact copy of the partition, which encompasses free/used space, but takes forever to back up/restore.
I also find it useful to be able to back up volumes while Windows is running. To date I've found that Drive Snapshot and ShadowProtect do this faithfully, and work well with encryption (with BestCrypt very well, VeraCrypt not so well, there are issues with restoring).
Would something else like wimlib be better suited to my needs?
Thanks!
Edit: I forgot to ask earlier, but what about the possibility of excluding files/directories from being backed up or restored, perhaps via wildcards or just explicitly specifying them? An example was mentioned regarding the pagefile, but I would also like to exclude others like hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys, Windows Temp directory, Recycle Bin, System Volume Information, etc.
What is strarc's average compression ratio? Or is this wholly dependent on what is being backed up?
Is there a complete list of accepted commands? Or something like "strarc --help" to get a list?