I've looked around a bit and have always used synctoy in the past, but I recently decided I need to really get a solid, reliable backup system going.
I'm currently trying out SyncBack (free version) and it seems pretty good, but I was hoping for some suggestions too.
I was also hoping people would share what their "backup plan" is. I think part of what I need to do is com up with a good idea of what I want to back and what I want to sync, what I want encrypted, etc.
I currently have a NAS storage of 6TB usable space in a RAID configuration (RAID 5 IIRC)
So, while some of the sync stuff has been nice, I find myself accidentally bogging down my network considerably more than I think I need to be.
Part of the problem is probably that I have nearly 2TB of data on my local machine. I should clean it up a bit for sure.
Anywho, any thoughts appreciated!
Edit based on some suggestion here:
1) DirSync Pro - Link: DirSync Pro. For my NAS backups. Toying around with this now Update: Was ultimately disappointed with this app. It had much potential though.
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I'd be interested to see what you come up with, too. I've been looking for a good file-level backup. I don't want to constantly image the local drives, just update changed files.
I tried Iomega's QuikProtect but it requires admin rights to run even if you are backing up only files for a single account. Plus it seems to have a problem connecting to the NAS on our domain. I have a RAID1 NAS on my home network and it works semi-decently with that, but definitely not ready for the enterprise.
I'd really like something very simple where I can select what get's backed up on a daily schedule.
I manually copy from my laptop to the external HDD. The main desktop comp has 2 drives that are mirrored. My changes happen weekly, if I had multiple changes daily then I'd find a different, automatic solution.
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I have two external HDDs, one is at work and one is at home, each one has a copy of everything on my computers. All my photos additionally backed-up and viewable online with MobileMe or iCloud or whatever Apple is calling it now.
I use USB harddrives. I generally copy and paste, but in the past I've used rsync.
Important things (photos) I have backed up in several places. (flash drives, hard drives (2) and on a server that the whole family has access to (so I guess 3 harddrives))
Here's a backup plan for ya:
Ever week on sunday make a full backup. Each day after that, make a differential backup. Each sunday alternate disks.
(S1 - d1 M1 -d2 Tu1 - D3 ..... S2 - d8, M2 - d2.....) like that (hope it makes sense).
Basically, eight disks (or more, if you need two per day....?) and you alternate the 'full' backup disk so you always have this weeks full backup and last weeks full backup.
Not really practical for a user, but for a business it works.
You could do bi-weekly backups..?
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The problem is backup software always chokes on my insane amount of data. Mostly because of the number of files. So a weekly backup would slow my home network to a crawl for almost a whole day each week.
I think I'm starting to form a plan though.
1) Initial complete backup to NAS (Done)
2) Going through all my old archives and zipping anything really old I am unlikely to need often. (in progress)
3) cleaning old files out (in progress)
4) New complete backup
5) Start using True Crypt and testing on duplicated/dummy data.
6) Look at offsite backup solutions (in progress)
7) Try to determine which folders to sync often (work related/other sensitive data), which to sync periodically (every week? ex Video/Photos/Music ) and then how often to backup everything (monthly?)
Any software I use will do diff backups, or at least only the modified files.
One problem I'm still wondering about is how to deal with things like code repositories. These folders have thousands of files in them.
I may have the software ignore .svn folders, but it does leave a gap in the protection....
Still thinking... Thanks for all the suggestions so far! More always welcome
When I had Windows, I used a triggered event to run a .bat on my.SD card. That was then included in a scheduled event running a similar .bat to backup to my NAS.
Don't see the point of all these apps. Xcopy is still the best IMHO.
Now I'm on ubuntu, I haven't looked into the cp command switches yet but I'm convinced ill do something script related
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I use that program. Its free and works really well for me. I have a desktop with a 1TB external hdd that I have shared on the network with a separate folder for each laptop in my house. So everyone's backup goes to the same hdd in a separate folder.
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When I had Windows, I used a triggered event to run a .bat on my.SD card. That was then included in a scheduled event running a similar .bat to backup to my NAS.
Don't see the point of all these apps. Xcopy is still the best IMHO.
Now I'm on ubuntu, I haven't looked into the cp command switches yet but I'm convinced ill do something script related
You don't think Xcopy would choke equally on nearly a million files? That was where I seem to hit snags with most of the programs. Basically there were so many files for it to look through, rather than a large amount of data.
That, and that I was disorganized as to what I wanted to backup and how often
I do like the GUI of some of the programs. Nothing wrong with a GUI as long as it doesn't sacrifice performance.
I also wonder if Windows would fail on long file names. Synctoy used to have this problem (though they mostly fixed it), not sure if Xcopy suffered the same issue. They basically had FAT rules even though the NAS and local drives were all NTFS.
You don't think Xcopy would choke equally on nearly a million files? That was where I seem to hit snags with most of the programs. Basically there were so many files for it to look through, rather than a large amount of data.
That, and that I was disorganized as to what I wanted to backup and how often
I do like the GUI of some of the programs. Nothing wrong with a GUI as long as it doesn't sacrifice performance.
I also wonder if Windows would fail on long file names. Synctoy used to have this problem (though they mostly fixed it), not sure if Xcopy suffered the same issue. They basically had FAT rules even though the NAS and local drives were all NTFS.
Hmmm... I am not very familiar with the various switches for these, but is there perhaps a switch that'll limit that apps useage...? Maybe you could have it limit the bandwidth to say 30%....
-- hypothetical --
Code:
xcopy /dir/to/copy /location/for/backup -l 25
where -l is [limit to X%] ??? Something similar to that?
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I also wonder if Windows would fail on long file names.
Well yes, 255 including full path, but if you manage to rename files over 255, you cant open them until your shorten the name anyway. It will state that the file cannot be found.
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Aye -- I actually took a look at RoboCopy, Xcopy, SyncToy, and RichCopy (newew version of robocopy)
They all looked good. Rsync also looked good. But I fourd DirCopy simple and fit my needs for now, and its Open Source and cross platform, so we'll see how it performs
Definitely one of the most important things I did to speed backups was to zip a lot of old directories (I just did this with WinRar-- it has a batch zip thing that works pretty well)
I used to use robocopy and loved it. It is much much better than Xcopy IMHO. Unfortunately, the last time that I checked robocopy does not work with VISTA or Windows 7. So I also am looking for something to use. I've heard that robocopy is built into Windows 7, but if so I don't know how to get to it.
I use old style copy & paste on my external drive. In most cases when something went wrong it became total disaster so I just save important files but I have now DesktopBackup named folders and sometimes there is more versions of one file, so I am looking for Duplicate copy or something similar to help me with my files..
Windows Vista and 7 have built in multiple copy reversion - via Shadow backups. If you right click on a file and select properties, one of the tab will be for previous versions.
I've based my network architecture around a Windows Home Server (WHS).
It acts as a central store for over 400 digitised DVDs, photos and music files and has a unique user share for each user in the house.
Backup regime..
Windows machines (1 laptop, 1 headless Zino)
- imaged nightly to WHS (multiple days, weeks, months on standard cycle)
- data backups (using Syncback free) to user shares on WHS
iPhone 3GS
- backed up to iCloud & via iTunes (replicated to WHS via Syncback jobs)
Asus Transformer
- Foldersync nightly backup of core files to unique WHS user share
- backed up to Google Account
- Apps list synced to AppBrain
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
- Foldersync nightly backup of core files to unique WHS user share
- backed up to Google Account
- Apps list synced to AppBrain
Ubuntu Laptop
- not backed up (shell machine used for RDP, VNC control of others & web browsing)
WHS
- All data replicated to NAS in weekly Syncback pro jobs
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Awesome. Now I know who to come talk to when I finally get around to building my own WHS. Lol.
Well I'll help if I can (just start a thread and PM me) - but I have to say it's been one of the easiest things I've ever had to setup since my ZX Spectrum when I was 11 ...
I jumped into WHS because we had a power outage that fried my Bubba One. I looked at building a WHS up, but came across an EX490 from HP that was being discontinued - I got a £75 rebate on it which meant I only paid about £250.
I then pulled the 1TB drive it came with and put that in the 3 bay NAS I was already using and bought 3* 1.5TB Seagate drives for the WHS.
Then it was just a question of install and go (via a Windows laptop with the provided disks). Biggest hassle was spending a week shuffling about 4TB of data around the network to make the WHS primary data holder in the network.
Since then, all I've done is add a UPS to protect the WHS and replaced my Homeplug networking with CAT6e run externally to the first floor NAS with an armoured cable.
It's taken me years to get the network setup just right with all my media ripped to digital formats (mostly because of equipment costs) but it's finally paying off
I use Sugarsync myself, I pay for the 30 GB plan, 50 bucks a year for as many PC's as I need.
This is double what I actually need, and am in the process of getting some friends hooked up with it which will increase my storage massively.
However, I have wanted a local alternative, so I made a .bat file with the xcopy commands in it to copy to my external hard drive.
I will include a delete directory command in it so that once a week it will delete all the files and then copy them all over to keep the changes the same.
cron is a scheduler so that you can automate when it runs all the time - which would mean that you can always edit the script whenever you want but it will still run at the specified time interval.
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Aye cron is the unix flavor of Task Scheduler -- though very unix-y
Anyways it's interesting this thread comes up again as I am having issues with DirSyncPro -- I think it has problems resolving conflicts with in-use files.
I need to do some more testing. It also has problems with the Macbook Pro going to sleep/screensaver causing a disconnect to the SMB share... though I suspect this is more of a Mac/SMB bug....
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Thanks guys, cron seems to work well. I can see the NAS light flashing now, although I have no idea what its actually doing specifically
I actually wrote my own batch script to delete the directory, copy over all the necessary directories. I then jumped into task scheduling and set it up to run every Monday and Friday at noon.
I also have SugarSync that auto updates everything, but atleast this way I have a secondary backup.
So I finally got around to giving Crash Plan a try. Going to see how it does on my mac backing up to the NAS 1st.
Sadly I think DirSyncPro isn't really cut out for heavy lifting backups. I think I may use it to sync video directories and whatnot, but we'll see. SyncToy 2.0 does ok for that as well.
Well, I'm a Linux user and use FSArchiver to do a whole partition backup to an external hard drive.
Quote:
FSArchiver is a system tool that allows you to save the contents of a file-system to a compressed archive file. The file-system can be restored on a partition which has a different size and it can be restored on a different file-system.
Some important files such as photos, docs, etc...I will save them manually to an external drive.
Thnx.
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OK, testing a new one now, kinda giving up on DirSyncPro..... it just worried me that it was corrupting files and the warning messages when it encountered errors were kinda useless (didnt state the name of file that caused the error)
rysnc is the best for copy/backup. It makes perfect copies down to the attributes, dates, and ownership permissions.
Many apps use rsync as the core w/ a pretty gui but if you can extract more power straight from the command line. You can synchronize deletions, archives, update only new files,etc.. After the initial clone, minor changes are mirrored instantly.
you can make live running clones across the network so if your machine goes down, a ready-to-go clone is up and running in minutes. Literally, up in minutes with the latest updates/file changes. I have set up fail-over webservers that switch instantly and rysnc makes it possible.
Rysnc is pretty built into every *nix OS like Linux, BSD, Solaris, OSX. There is a Windows port I believe.
All you need to do is set up a cron or a live file-system detection bash script. Even with million of files, rsync only needs to copy whatever isn't on the destination path or whatever is recently updated.
I see people copy-n-pasting folders/drives all the time and it is really inefficient. Same for the backup apps that do whole backups/clones.
Last edited by mrspeedmaster; January 2nd, 2012 at 12:28 PM.
Aye rsync is nice, I think it's the core of the app I am trying now.
I think what I'm going to end up with is crash plan for encrypted full backups and Synkron for minor sync jobs like music and video to specialized folder on the NAS.
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Since my personal files are not really big, I'm saving them directly on dropbox (pictures, documents, music). For example, my Documents Library saves my documents on my Dropbox by default. (I'm using Windows 7)
The same personal files are also backed up daily to a 2TB external drive via the Backup solution that comes with Windows. The main use of this external drive is to manually store the bigger files, but I've got no backup of those since I delete them from my laptop. I wouldn't be happy losing this drive's content, but it's nothing that I couldn't find again.
Seems like you can't get help from me, but I thought I'd post to inspire others.
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Favorite backup solution?
Not really practical for a user, but for a business it works. 
