PawEng

Revision control systems (Wikipedia) manage multiple versions or revisions of documents. It is often used by software developers to manage their source code, but it can be useful for anyone. Have you ever made a change to a document, saved it, and later wished you had an earlier version of it? If so then you may want to consider using a revision control system. Full-blown revision control systems allow multiple people to work on multiple branches of the same files at the same time, and it is possible to track who made what change and when it was made.

A full revision control system is overkill for single-user systems like most PCs. This is where Mogware’s FileHamster comes in. It automates the revision control process and runs it in the background. Their slogan “Always working so you don’t have to” says it all. They track revisions to you files and saves them for you, and it all happens automatically.

Setup is easy. You download the program and install it. Then FileHamster asks you where you want to keep your revisions. You can choose any internal or external hard disk you want. I chose an SD card that I always keep in my laptop. Next you select the files you want to track. You can select directories or individual files. That is it. There are lots of options to control how and when the revisions are made. For example, you can create a new revision every time a file has changed, or you can specify a time delay so that at least, say, 10 minutes must pass before a new revision is created.

FileHamster lets you browse all your revisions, and you can restore revisions of individual files. I have not found a way to restore all files in a directory at once.

FileHamster supports plugins. There are plugins for storing your revisions in a compressed (zip) format, for storing revisions on an ftp server, and more.

Mogware’s FileHamster runs on Windows. The basic version is free. Mogware is currently having a sale where they offer 50% off on all paid versions of FileHamster and paided plugins.