Differential ZIP Backup

This is a vault backup plugin for Obsidian.

We can store all the files which have been modified, into a ZIP file.

Installation

1. Install this plug-in from Beta Reviewers Auto-update Tester.

How to use

Making backup

1. Perform Create Differential Backup from the command palette.
2. We will get backupinfo.md and a zip file YYYY-MM-DD-SECONDS.zip in the backup folder
   • backup folder can be configured in the settings dialogue.

Restore a file

1. Perform Restore from backups from the command palette.
2. Select the file you want to restore.
3. Select the backup you want to restore.
4. Select the place to save the restored file.
5. We got an old file.

Settings

Key	Description
Start backup at launch	When the plug-in has been loaded, Differential backup will be created automatically.
Backup folder	The folder which backups are stored.
Restore folder	The folder which restored files will be stored.
Include hidden folder	Backup also the configurations, plugins, themes, and, snippets.
ZIP splitting size	An large file are not good for handling, so this plug-in splits the backup ZIP into this size. This splitted ZIP files can be handled by 7Z or something archiver.

What is backupinfo.md?

This markdown file contains a list of file information. The list is stored as YAML. backupinfo.md is also stored in each Zip file. For the sake of simplicity, suppose we have three files, make a backup, change one of the files and make another backup.

Then we get the following.

Untitled.md:
  digest: 452438bd53ea864cdf60269823ea8222366646c14f0f1cd450b5df4a74a7b19b
  filename: Untitled.md
  mtime: 1703656274225
  history:
    - zipName: 2023-12-28-41265.zip
      modified: 2023-12-27T05:51:14.225Z
  storedIn: 
Untitled 2.md:
  digest: 7241f90bf62d00fde6e0cf2ada1beb18776553ded5233f97f0be3f7066c83530
  filename: Untitled 2.md
  mtime: 1703656274225
  history:
    - zipName: 2023-12-28-41265.zip
      modified: 2023-12-27T05:51:14.225Z
Untitled 1.md:
  digest: e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
  filename: Untitled 1.md
  mtime: 1708498190402
  history:
    - zipName: 2023-12-28-41265.zip
      modified: 2023-12-27T05:51:14.225Z
    - zipName: 2024-2-21-56995.zip
      modified: 2024-02-21T06:49:50.402Z

The following entries are important.

key	value
digest	SHA-1 of the file. DZB detects all changes by this hash.
history	Archived ZIP file name and Timestamp at the time.

Note: Modified time has been stored due to the lack of resolution of the ZIP file, but this is information for us.

ZIP files

We will get the following zip files.

2023-12-28-41265.zip	2024-2-21-56995.zip
Untitled.md
Untitled 1.md
Untitled 2.md	Untitled 1.md
backupinfo.md	backupinfo.md

As the astute will have noticed, we can pick the ZIP that contains the file we want from only the latest one without any special tool!

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License: MIT