bcollect is a tool for backing up remote hosts to local directories. It can keep a defined number of copies for specific backup intervals to give you a backlog of available backups for restoring data. bcollect keeps its backups directly accessible as files and directories so you can search through them and access files with regular tools and just copy files back as needed. In order to save space, bcollect uses hardlinks between different instances of the same backed-up host so multiple backups don't take up the same space multiple times. Only files which are actually different between two backups actually occupy space. If the file has not been changed, a reference will be created to the original file.