BackupDesk

1. First run

BackupDesk has two parts: the window you open, and a background service that does the actual backing up. The service runs whether or not the window is open — that is what lets a backup happen at 2am while you are asleep.

Allowing your account to manage backups

The first time you open BackupDesk you may be asked to allow your account to manage backups, with one confirmation from Windows.

This is asked because the background service can read every file on the computer, so only approved accounts are allowed to control it. You confirm once and are never asked again.

If the computer is managed by someone else, an administrator can approve your account for you, including from a command prompt:

net localgroup "BackupDesk Operators" <username> /add

It takes effect the next time that user signs in.

The window and the tray

Closing the window does not stop BackupDesk — it keeps running in the notification area so scheduled backups still happen. Right-click the tray icon to reopen it, or to quit properly. You can turn this off in Settings if you would rather closing the window closed the app.

2. The screens

3. Creating a backup job

Press + New Backup Job. A job needs three things. Everything else has a working default.

Sources — what to protect

Add one or more folders. A job can have several, and they can be on different drives. Sources may also be on another machine over FTP, FTPS or SFTP — see §9.

Exclusions let you skip things that are not worth backing up. BackupDesk suggests common ones (build output, caches, temporary files) which you can accept or ignore, and you can add your own patterns.

Destination — where it goes

A local folder, an external drive, or a network share.

Schedule — when it runs

Either pick a preset or build your own. See §4.

Impact — how much of the machine it uses

You can also cap throughput, which is useful when backing up over a network you share with other people.

4. Backup levels and schedules

BackupDesk has three backup levels, and you choose which one each scheduled run uses. This is the core idea of the product, so it is worth two minutes.

The trade-off is space against resilience:

• Differentials grow larger each day until the next full, but a damaged one only costs you that one backup.
• Incrementals stay small every day, but they form a chain — a single damaged incremental spoils every backup made after it.

BackupDesk shows you this where you choose levels, and where you delete backups. It is not trying to scare you off incrementals; it is information you need to make the choice.

Presets

If you would rather not think about it, pick one:

You can edit any preset afterwards — they are starting points, not modes.

Why the first backup is slow and the rest are fast

The first run copies everything. After that, BackupDesk checks each file’s size and modification time and skips the ones that have not changed, without reading them. That is what makes later runs feel almost instant — not the speed of the copying, but the amount of work avoided.

Files that have changed are read and hashed with SHA-256, so a file whose timestamp changed but whose contents did not is correctly recognised as unchanged.

5. Retention — how long backups are kept

Backups are deleted only under rules you set. Without retention, backups grow until the destination fills up and then quietly start failing — exactly when you believe you are protected.

Retention is set per job, in chains. A chain is a full backup plus everything that depends on it. The default is keep the last 3 chains.

Chains are always pruned as a whole, so a full is never deleted out from under the differentials or incrementals that need it.

Three rules BackupDesk will not break:

• It tells you when it prunes to make room. Silent deletion is not something a backup tool should do.
• It never deletes your only remaining chain, even if the disk is full. You get a loud warning instead. A tool that deletes your last backup to make room for a new one is worse than useless.
• It never prunes a chain you are restoring from.

6. Running, pausing and cancelling

• Run now starts a backup immediately, at the level you pick next to the button. It defaults to Full, because a manual backup is usually taken before doing something risky.
• Jobs queue rather than running all at once, so two jobs do not fight over the same disk. A queued job tells you what it is waiting for.
• Cancel always works. A cancelled job never leaves a half-written backup that looks restorable — the set is only committed once it is complete.
• Pause and resume are available during the phases where they make sense.

Watch all of this on Activity. Finished runs move to History.

7. Restoring

Restoring is a job like any other: it queues, it reports progress, and it appears in History.

There are two ways to find what you want:

• Browse a point in time. Pick a backup set and walk the folder tree as it was at that moment.
• Search across sets. Type a filename to see every version of it that exists, with the date of each, so you can pick the one from before whatever went wrong.

Where it goes

• A folder you choose — safe, and the usual choice.
• The original locations — this overwrites the live files, and BackupDesk says so plainly.

What to do about files that are already there

You can restore everything, or tick just the folders and files you need.

8. Checking a backup is intact

Stored backups → Verify re-reads a backup set and checks every file against its recorded hash. This catches bit-rot — a disk quietly corrupting a file that nothing has touched in a year.

Verify works on encrypted backups too, and does not need the password to do it.

Worth running occasionally on anything archival, especially backups kept on a drive that spends most of its life in a drawer.

9. Backing up from another machine (FTP, FTPS, SFTP)

A source folder can live on another machine. Add a server under the job’s sources, then browse it to pick folders.

Supported: FTP, FTPS (FTP over TLS) and SFTP (file transfer over SSH). SFTP also covers anything you would have used SCP for.

Notes worth knowing:

• Test connection connects from the background service, not from the window. That matters: a successful test is evidence the 2am run will also connect, rather than proof that your account can reach the server.
• SSH host keys must be accepted before a job depends on the server. If a server’s key has never been accepted, BackupDesk refuses the connection rather than trusting it silently — otherwise the job would work whenever you were watching and fail every unattended run.
• SSH private keys are imported, not linked. BackupDesk stores its own copy, because the service does not run as you and cannot read files in your user profile.
• Destinations cannot be remote. Backups are written to a local folder, drive or network share.

10. Compression

Off by default. Per job, you can choose:

Files that are already compressed — JPEG, MP4, ZIP, Office documents — are stored as-is, because compressing them again costs processor time and makes them slightly larger.

The compression level you pick is always honoured. The Impact setting is separate and only governs priority and how many cores are used.

11. Encryption

Off by default. When turned on for a job, file contents and the list of filenames are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, so someone who finds the drive learns neither what your files contain nor what they are called.

Turning it on

You choose a password, and BackupDesk shows you a recovery key.

Either the password or the recovery key will open a backup.

Scheduled backups do not ask for a password

BackupDesk keeps a protected copy of the key on this computer, tied to this machine, so unattended runs work. That copy is never written into the backups themselves — otherwise a backup would only be readable on the computer that made it, which would defeat the point.

If that local copy is ever lost — a rebuilt machine, a restored database — restoring will ask for the password instead.

Turning it off

Backups already written stay encrypted and stay restorable. Only future backups are written unencrypted.

12. Settings

Preferences for this computer. Individual jobs keep their own settings.

13. Free version and BackupDesk Pro

The free version of BackupDesk runs one backup job.

That one job is not limited in any way. All three levels, schedules, retention, snapshots of open files, remote sources, compression, encryption, verify and restore all work fully. The limit is on how many jobs you can have, and nothing else.

BackupDesk Pro is a one-time purchase through the Microsoft Store that removes the limit on the number of jobs. It changes nothing else.

14. What a backup actually looks like on disk

Worth knowing, because it is the reason to trust the thing.

Each backup set is a plain folder that describes itself:

Full-2026-07-27T02-00Z/
  manifest.json      what this backup is: level, date, file and byte counts
  files.jsonl        one line per file: path, size, date, SHA-256 hash
  manifest.sha256    checksums of the two files above, to detect corruption
  data/              the files themselves

Three consequences:

• There is no central database to lose. If a single backup folder survives a disaster, BackupDesk can read and restore it on its own.
• Your files are stored whole, not chopped into a deduplicated blob store shared between backups. You can go into data/ and copy a file out by hand if you ever want to.
• Uninstalling BackupDesk does not remove a single backup. They live wherever the job’s destination points and are not stored inside the application.

(Encrypted backups are the same structure, but the payloads and files.jsonl are encrypted and filenames are not visible in the folder tree.)

15. Troubleshooting

“Service: Not running”

The background service is not there, so nothing is being backed up. Check the BackupDesk service in Windows Services. Note that BackupDesk shows you this instead of an empty screen — “no jobs” and “cannot see your jobs” mean opposite things, and it will never show you the wrong one.

BackupDesk asks to allow your account every time

The approval did not stick. Have an administrator add you to the BackupDesk Operators group (see §1). It applies at your next sign-in.

A job says it is waiting

Almost always a destination that is not currently there — an external drive unplugged, or a network share unreachable. Reconnect it and the job starts on its own, usually within seconds.

“The background service does not have the rights to take volume snapshots”

Backups will fail rather than risk missing files that are open. Check that the BackupDesk service is installed and started.

A backup failed on some files

The run reports which ones. Files locked by another program are normally handled with a Windows volume snapshot; a file that still could not be read is listed rather than quietly skipped.

Restoring asks for a password unexpectedly

The job’s local key copy could not be used — usually a rebuilt machine or a restored database. Your password or recovery key will work.

Getting help

About → Copy details puts the app version, service version, Windows version and install location on the clipboard. Include that in any message to support.