github fcorbelli/zpaqfranz 64.3
Windows executables and source code

pre-release8 hours ago

Significantly improved franzen support

Currently mainly on Windows, with no support yet for multi-volume archives.

New franzen command

Used to encrypt, decrypt, test, and dump .franzen files.
Run zpaqfranz h franzen for details.

Introduced (still improving) exclusion handling during Windows image creation

You can try it directly with -not standard, or use -frugal for automatic (“automagic”) handling.

Improved imaging output

Use -verbose to display extensive information normally hidden.

Garbage handling

Enabled with work frugal (to inspect occupied space).
Use -kill to delete files (warning: risky!).

New monitor command (Windows only)

With administrator privileges, it monitors the NTFS journal at configurable intervals
(default: 10 seconds, adjustable with -n).
It currently checks which files are modified in the background by Windows.

The current idea is to improve the franzpaz class, i.e. to identify temporary files,
cache directories, and similar items that are usually not visible.

In the future, this will allow near-instant (milliseconds) interval-based backups
of very large NTFS volumes.

Major improvements to the pp command

Two new switches are available:

  • -verify: re-reads files from disk (those present in the archive)
  • -paranoid: compares archive contents against the filesystem

Using both provides the maximum level of verification achievable with zpaqfranz
(at the cost of execution time).

In detail:

  1. All files in the archive are sequentially decompressed to recompute their hashes
    (strongly recommended to use SSD or NVMe for large archives).
  2. All archive hashes are compared against hashes recomputed from filesystem files (-verify).
  3. It is verified that all archive files exist in the filesystem and vice versa (-paranoid).

This triple check works only on “stable” folders, i.e. directories whose contents are
not modified during the copy process (e.g. Thunderbird downloading new mail,
Dropbox syncing data, etc.).

Example usage:

zpaqfranz a z:\1.zpaq c:\data
zpaqfranz pp z:\1.zpaq -verify -paranoid -exec_error houston.bat

The second command will fail if any change occurs in c:\data
(e.g. file creation, deletion, or modification),
and will succeed only if the contents of z:\1.zpaq
are exactly identical to c:\data at that moment.

Major improvements to the dir command

Now even closer to the Windows dir command, but significantly more powerful.

Notable features:

  • Completely new /tree (-summary) implementation
  • Improved wildcard parsing
  • Colored output (as usual, disable with -nocolor)

Improvements to the franzspaz class

Automatic exclusion of garbage files to reduce backup size (-frugal switch).

Some internal refactoring

Italian comments greatly reduced.

Various fixes and minor improvements

Final note

As you can see, the program is under heavy development. This means new bugs may be
introduced and time is needed to stabilize and improve the code.

Please report any anomalous behavior: you will help improve the project and
you will also be credited in the acknowledgements.

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