Can’t incrementally sync inside the container without remounting. Works best with differential backup tools (e.g., Duplicati, Borg). 5. The Restore Drill: Why Most Backups Fail You’ve backed up. Now simulate a disaster: your USB drive dies.
Monthly archival snapshots. Strategy B: The Delta-Sync with Exclusions (For Daily Use) Tool: FreeFileSync, Robocopy (Windows), rsync (Linux/macOS). Rule set example (Robocopy): portable apps backup
# Create a shadow copy of the drive hosting portable apps wmic shadowcopy call create Volume=E:\ # Then back up from the shadow path: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopyX\ On macOS (if using APFS): portable apps backup
For apps without relocation tools: Use a symlink. portable apps backup
robocopy E:\PortableApps F:\Backup\PortableApps /MIR /XD "Cache" "Temp" "Logs" /XF "*.lock" "*.tmp" "thumbcache_*.db" /MIR mirrors one-way. /XD excludes entire folders. /XF excludes file types.