
Selecting a backup folder
You need to specify a folder that will contain your copied files. You can have backuplist+ create a folder for you or backup directly into the destination folder (no special folder selected). There are some options listed at the top left of the settings window Backuplist+ remembers all these settings for future backups. You will also need to select a destination for this folder, in the main window. See "Choose a destination."
Backup to folder
This creates a default folder named "mybackup" which will be created at the selected destination. If you already have a folder by that name in that destination, your backup files will be copied into that same folder each time, replacing the originals if they have been modified since the last backup session. If you don not select to have a designated backup folder, the source files will be copied directly to the selected destination, indicated in the main window Destination text field.
Incremental backups
Clicking this check box, you will need to type a number in the text field to represent the maximum number of folders generated.If you select this option and enter a number, such as three, backuplist+ will create a new numbered folder at each session. Once the limit is reached it will begin again at 1, deleting the first backup and copying the new backup into the "1" folder. This allows you to have several backup versions spanning a given time period to refer back to if you wish to find a file before certain previous changes were made. These incremental backups are often called "Snapshots" since they are a complete picture of your files at a given time. This the same thing Time Machine does.
Rsync creates incremental backups that will be complete snapshots of your latest files but will not take up any extra disk space! Only the files that have been modified since last backup will be copied over. Each snapshot only takes up the amount of disk space for the changed bytes it contains-everything else is a hard link that seems "real" but is just a pointer to the original backup file.
Dated folder
This creates a folder named "mybackup" (or your choice of name) with the current date appended to the name such as "mybackup 03-02-06". Without a time stamp each backup would update the existing backup folder. A dated folder create a new unique "stamped" folder, an archive of your files from a given time period. Unless you choose "Incremental" backups" in conjunction with this choice, each archive will be a full backup copy.
Compressed archive
Clicking this check box will tell backuplist+ to make a single compressed archive of your selected files. It will combine each item in your list into a single zip archive. Just double-click on the archives to decompress and restore the original files.
Burn folder
Clicking this check box will tell backuplist+ to collect the listed files and copy them into a new Burn folder. They can be compressed as well. This is only available on OS 10.4X or later. Just open a Burn folder and click "burn" to burn the contents to CD or DVD. Note: you can't burn a CD with more than 700MB to 800MB of data. The Burn option places aliases of your folders and files in the burn folder (except for the system folder files) so creating the burn folder is very fast and doesn't use up disk space.
Disk Image
Clicking this check box will tell backuplist+ to make a sparse type disk image with your backup files inside it. A disk image is useful for certain situations and is an exact copy that can be un-mounted and stored as an archive on an external disk or your own hard drive. See more on Disk Image....