Backup software with journaling and revision control functionality?

Is there any backup software out there that will automatically back up a "version" of your file every time it's modified, and will allow the user to restore a specific version? Ideally, it'd be able to cache all the aggregate changes and then commit them in a single push as well, as I don't always have my external HDD turned on.

There's plenty of software that does bits and pieces of this (shadow copy/previous versions, SCM software, OS X Lion's Versions, Time Machine), but I have yet to see an integrated and precise implementation of this made specifically for the purpose of backing up data.

 

I am actually quite surprise Microsoft didn't copy this from VMS. That was one hell of a feature I love.

Unfortunately, the file system is kind of an uninteresting area for Windows so there isn't that many alternative FS for Windows and what you ask for is a file system functionality and why you only see timer based.

 

Well, actually, there are tons of software out there that do exactly that.

Most of them cost $$$.

Windows Home Server has been able to do versioned backups for quite a while now.

 

Which FS that you can add to standard Windows that do it, $$$ or not ? Just curious to know.

Just to be clear, we are not talking about versioned backup(which even W7 has that) but automatic versioning of modified files. In VMS, I can say 'EDIT myvile;12' which I forgot if it is 12 version back or something like that.

EDIT:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versioning_file_system

this is the versioning we are talking and VMS is the first example.

 

well, we're not talking about VMS or even NT 3.51 (which had that feature too) are we?

The OP asked, in a windows-specific forum, how to do backups that maintained multiple file versions and allowed for restoration of whatever version.

 

Is there any backup software out there that will automatically back up a "version" of your file every time it's modified

The automatically is what I read. That is, the user doesn't need to invoke a 'backup before I write' action but the backup is done 'just before it hits the file system'. I may have read it wrong though.

EDIT:
To OP: this may be what you are after

http://www.acertant.com/web/versomatic/default.htm

not sure how they do it but said 'real time'

 

You're right - I'm looking for something that automatically tracks changes and backs up both the latest version as well as all previous versions. The original version of my first post was more explicit about the need for a modification-based backup system as opposed to a time-based one, but I removed that section as it made the post a lot more wordy without adding much. In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have.

I looked briefly at the Versomatic site, and it seems more like something that targets specific usage scenarios (much like Lion's Versions feature or an improved Previous Versions) as opposed to a full-blown backup tool that could help recover from both unintended file modification as well as catastrophic system failure.