Budgie Backup - Simple File & Folder Backup App for Windows
Published on 16th July 2026 by Simon Fearby
My History
Below is the work-in-progress version of the simple file and folder backup app for Windows that I have always wanted to build. I have used Windows and Linux computers since the late 1990s, creating files and hoarding data ever since.
I spent my first few pay cheques on a then-enormous Western Digital 13GB hard drive and a dual-layer CD-RW (rewritable) drive.
Over the years I have accumulated a great deal of data, and backing it up has become a significant task. I use the excellent Backblaze software to automatically back up my data to the cloud (encrypted, of course).
Read my review here: Backblaze Review - Unlimited Cloud Backup for Your PC or Mac
Golden rules of backup
- Backup to Three different locations.
- Two of the media need to be different.
- One of the locations needs to be offsite.
Why the Budgie Backup Name?
While helping a business-savvy friend with his computers, I realised he needed a better backup strategy. He owns a large removable drive for backups but rarely copies data to it, because his files are scattered across his system and doing so would take considerable time.
I am in a fortunate position, as I use Backblaze to automatically back up over 7GB of my data online, and I keep daily backups of my Windows partition with Acronis True Image.
Acronis True Image is only available on a subscription basis (rather than a one-off lifetime purchase), so for him it comes down to a CapEx versus OpEx decision.
I considered recommending FreeFileSync to back up his data, but it is difficult to automate. Instead, I offered to write a backup app for him and make it as simple as possible to use.
I named it Budgie Backup because he breeds Australian budgerigars as a hobby.
CreateBudgieBackup.exe - Simple File & Folder Backup App for Windows
This is the first screen of the Budgie Backup app. I personally use, and strongly recommend, Acronis True Image, Backblaze and even CrashPlan to automatically back up data.
Budgie Backup is not intended to be the be-all and end-all of backup apps. My friend and I will use it to copy data from selected locations to a secondary internal hard drive, and then on to a removable hard drive.
The red and green status indicators for Acronis and Backblaze serve as a reminder to stay vigilant and run multiple types of backup.
The certificate check is designed to prevent spoofing of the backup app's processes (for example, renaming notepad.exe to bypass a warning).
The next screen (after accepting) asks the user to tick the items that matter to them. Budgie Backup then begins analysing those items to determine where the data is located.
Further work is planned in this area to automatically detect which programs and files the user interacts with and saves.
The next screen lets the user see how many folders and files each location contains, and offers the option to add any folders they skipped in the previous step.
Here they can give their backup a name, for example "MyBudgieBackup", choose the primary and secondary locations, and lock in the folders to be saved.
By default, the primary backup location is the internal fixed hard drive with the most free space, and the secondary location is the external hard drive with the most free space.
The plan is to support separate backup items (for example, "MyDailyBackups" (daily) and "MyVideoBackups" (weekly)) that can be run at different times and on different schedules.
You can add custom folders to the backup by clicking the "Add a custom folder" button and selecting the folder.
After reviewing the various backup locations, you can estimate the number of folders, files and overall size of the backup before proceeding.
Before proceeding with the backup, a "Search Backup Items" box in the top right lets you type in files you know are important, for example "Tax", and check whether they fall inside or outside the backup selection.
For example, here I am searching the backup for everything containing the word "Tax". The list shows each file's name, its folder, when it was created, and whether it is included in the backup.
Here I am searching for the word "Tax" across the entire system (outside the backup folders) to check whether I have left any tax-related files behind.
I suspect most people do not know exactly where their files live on their computer, but they are familiar with the program, the full file name, or the extension.
I am also building an option to check the recent-file lists from Windows and common applications, to see whether those files are included in the backup selection.
This screen looks a little complex, but fear not: it is simply a script that Budgie Backup saves to a *.budgiebackup file. That file is then handed to RunBudgieBackup.exe, which runs the steps. The user only sees this screen once.
The main goal of Budgie Backup is to provide a single file, marked with a Budgie icon, that the user interacts with. It carries out predefined actions and reports whether the backup succeeded or failed.
The user can save this file to their desktop or documents, set it up as a Windows scheduled task, or pin it to the system tray so it prompts them to run the backup at a predetermined time.
Once you have used CreateBudgieBackup.exe to create a *.budgiebackup file, you will not need to open CreateBudgieBackup.exe again.
RunBudgieBackup.exe - Simple File & Folder Backup App for Windows
This screen is a work in progress, but in essence RunBudgieBackup.exe loads the *.budgiebackup file, checks it, and confirms everything is ready for the backup to run. The user clicks "Start Backup" and RunBudgieBackup.exe gets to work. It might take half an hour, or anywhere from three to six hours, to copy everything. Its goal is to execute the backup and copy the data to the two locations the user specifies.
The user clicks "Open Backup File" to load the steps into the user interface.
The user can then see their backup steps, ready to start the backup.
When the user clicks "Start Backup", a Budgie Backup warning screen breaks down exactly what is going to happen. It also runs a series of pre-checks beforehand, so that any issues are ideally caught before they occur.
Once the backup starts, the user can walk away, grab a coffee, or do something else. Budgie Backup works through its pre-backup steps, copies the files to both locations, and then validates them.
Before any files are copied, RunBudgieBackup runs a number of checks to confirm everything is in order (for example, that the folders exist and there is sufficient disk space) before starting the backup.
Because the volume of data can be enormous, and internal or external drives can be quite slow, there is plenty to look at. You will be able to see whether the system is running low on memory, along with debugging information and graphs to keep you engaged. After all, the main reason people avoid backups is that they can be so time-consuming to run.
If you are curious, you can watch the backup work in order. First, it copies the nominated folders to the primary backup location, packaging everything into a zip file so it does not consume huge amounts of the file allocation table. Once the primary location is complete, it copies that to the secondary location, which is most likely a removable hard drive.
RunBudgieBackup also displays disk read and write speeds, along with any potential bottlenecks and CPU, memory and drive performance, to give you a clear indication of how the backup is progressing.
After a period of time, both backup locations will hold a copy of your data. It is not stored in a proprietary format, so you can do whatever you like with it: open it up and look around. That is the whole point of the backup, to avoid a proprietary format that becomes a problem if Windows stops working or you need to recover files. The aim is to keep things as simple as possible.
This application is currently in a pre-alpha working state, so things will change. I started writing it to help a friend, but it is turning into a genuinely useful application for me too, and one that will retrain me not to fully automate my backups, but to keep backups on local hard drives that I control myself.