Upload files and later download only the previously uploaded files

Dear WinSCP experts,

I use WinSCP for quite some time to transfer files from my laptop to a remote computer. The directory structures are mostly the same, but much more directories and data are present on the remote computer, which I use for more demanding computations. So I use WinSCP to copy files back and forth, but also to regularly make complete backups of my notebook directories to the remote computer.

The problem is, if I will need to restore this kind of "backup" someday, I am in some trouble as I will have to manually select what needs to be restored. So my question is: Is there a way to log the file transfer of such a backup session to a local file, such that I could later use this file to restore only the files which have been previously uploaded? Of course a copy of the log file itself on the remote computer might help in certain situations.

Best regards,

Norbert

WinSCP cannot do this for you on its own.
But you can enable XML logging. In case of a disaster, you can write a script to parse the XML logs to collect all files that were previously uploaded and use those paths to build a download script.
See also https://winscp.net/eng/docs/logging_xml#xslt