8 ms·

Today is World Backup Day

81 points by pinwale 15y ago

jannes 15y ago
What backup software do you recommend? I just want to keep my external hard drive in sync, but at the moment I have to do that manually. (I'm using Windows, and I'm trying to avoid having to use cygwin, so rsync is not really an option)
- peterhajas 15y ago
  If that's all you want, I'm sure you can find a Windows equivalent to dd to run every day. Do a direct bit copy, and then your external disk will always be in sync with your internal disk.
  - KingOfB 15y ago
    Should Checkout CloudPull for the mac for backing up google services. Yes, everyone should backup gmail. If you get hacked and all your email deleted, googles backups won't do you any good. Arq is a good backup-to-cloud service if you're conscious of where your data goes(S3) and who has the keys(Only you). They're both indie programmers out of Boston too, which may be some of my bias, but check'm out!
  - mindslight 15y ago
    That's a terrible idea. Backing up with disk images will take a long time, erase your previous backup at the start, and not prevent against filesystem corruption.
- Zakuzaa 15y ago
  Dropbox for pc/mobile and Jungledisk for servers.
  - jrgifford 15y ago
    Dropbox is for syncing, not backup. There is a difference, and people don't care about the difference until they run into problems.
    - lubos 15y ago
      Dropbox doesn't delete your files when you delete them from dropbox. You can always restore them later, I have used that feature countless of times. So Dropbox can act like a backup, I still use JungleDisk to backup my whole dropbox just to be safe.
      - ef4 15y ago
        By default Dropbox keeps 30 days of old versions. You can pay extra to bump that up to "forever".
      - jrgifford 15y ago
        Depends on what you mean by "backup". Backup to me (and most others that I've talked to) means "I can restore all my data, my entire hard drive, and be back to where I was yesterday, so if I screw up my kernel tonight, I can just use the backup to revert to my pre-kernel hacking spree". (to an average joe, it means the same thing, but not as much detail)
- trotsky 15y ago
  Have you tried the built in Win7 backup system? It's gotten considerably better over the years. Acronis True Image is a commercial solution (~$40) that may be a bit overkill for your needs but it does a good job and is feature rich.
- gigantor 15y ago
  After much trial and error, I've gone with the robust solution that's never failed me: robocopy.exe /MIR <source> <target> Create a scheduled task, set your external drive as the target, and forget. robocopy.exe is a built-in utility for Windows 7 and can be freely downloaded for via the resource pack. Also consider an offsite solution such as Windows Live Mesh for the free 5GB to create offsite backups of the most important folders. Never know when a catastrophic event (theft, fire) can take out your backups.
  - benohear 15y ago
    Unless I'm misreading this, it only mirrors your drive with no history. That's a poor approach - if your drive starts packing in you're likely to backup a fair amount of corruption before you realize what's going on. Ditto if you screw up - you have to catch it before the next backup otherwise you're boned.
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  Bvckup [1] might be of some interest. I've been using it for a couple of years and it's a setup-and-forget kind of software. It's a bit dated, but a newer version is in works. [1] http://bvckup.com http://bvckup.com
- icebraining 15y ago
  Why not use Windows itself? It has a decent backup system. Alternatively, for syncing and not real backuping (no timestamped snapshots, for example), I've used FreeFileSync[1] successfully in the past. [1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/
  - kijin 15y ago
    FreeFileSync is great if you just want to keep an up-to-date copy of everything and you don't need multiple incremental backups. It compares file size and timestamps and only copies files that have changed. You can save batch jobs as a file and click on it whenever you want to sync. You can even make the batch job autorun when you connect your external hard drive. Throw TrueCrypt into the mix, and you've got a pretty good and secure backup.
- ph33r 15y ago
  Been using the Freeware version Syncback for over 5 years now. Highly recommended: (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/index.html http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/index.html)
  - cdvonstinkpot 15y ago
    Another happy SyncBack user here.
jrgifford 15y ago
Well, pinwale! It has been a long time. Nice to see that you're A. still alive, B. still doing awesome things like this. Keep up the good work!
- pinwale 15y ago
  Yeah, it has been awhile since the last Ubuntu release. Still thinking if we should do anything for the next ubuntu release.
  - jrgifford 15y ago
    If you're going to, hit me up for managing your IRC channel or anything else like that. :)
    - pinwale 15y ago
      Thanks, I'll keep you in mind. :)
deleted 15y ago
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- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
stephengoodwin 15y ago
Should we really suggest to people backing up using anything but remote backups?
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  How can you sincerely suggest remote backups if virtually none of them provide privacy provisions? If anything, people should be discouraged from using remote backups that are not encrypted at source.
  - kijin 15y ago
    Virtually none of them? SpiderOak, Wuala, JungleDisk.
    - budmang 15y ago
      Agreed that backing up only in transit can be sketchy. Most online backup services (including ours, www.Backblaze.com) encrypt your data on your client. Also, we provide an option to use a private key in which case not only is it encrypted, but only you have the key. Of course, if you forget it the data is completely unrecoverable.
- liw 15y ago
  A remote backup can be very slow to restore, so having both local and remote backups may be worthwhile. It's more expensive, of course, so it's a judgement call, but it's too simplistic to say that everyone only ever needs one of them.
  - kijin 15y ago
    Remote is slow to restore, but it's even slower to back up in the first place. With the current state of not-so-high-speed internet in North America, it could take several weeks to upload 100GB of pictures and videos.
    - 15y ago
tjoff 15y ago
I'd love to take more backups, but is there a decent backup software (paid or free) for Windows? I have my doubts... While I use the Win7 backup system on my WS it does make me feel a bit uneasy, I feel I have no control over it whatsoever. It doesn't do incremental backups. I have no say in how long they should be stored, the backups are stored in a weird way with hundreds of zip-files and I've found no easy way to browse them or restore just a lost file and I haven't even dared to use the restore options because I feel like I'm going to blow something up (so maybe you can do that, but the UI is just bad). Also I get no report that a backup was successful or if it has failed and I can't tell it to delete old backups). I've used Acronis True Image before and I really wanted to like it but... I used it to, among other things, back up some network drives. All was fine and I got confirmation that everything was fine every week, but one day I skimmed through the logs and found out that the network drives hadn't been backed up but Acronis still said that the whole operation was a success. I can't even begin to comprehend the absolute lunacy about ignoring some failures in a backup program. Maybe they've fixed this now but they have a long way to restore my trust. Also when doing incremental backups you can not anywhere state that I wan't a complete backup after x incremental backups. You have to manually move the old backups to force it to do a complete backup again, and it won't delete backups older than x months/years so you have to manually clean up or else your backups will constantly increase for all eternity. This should be about the third or fourth feature you implement in a backup program and all it would take is like 10 lines of code and a checkbox. So, still having a hard time to see how one couldn't be better than Acronis I stumbled upon EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation but you can't do incremental backups of your OS (seriously?), so I've resorted to doing incremental partition images but I'm mighty unimpressed by the GUI and I don't feel safe at all. Seriously guys, this shouldn't be hard! I just want incremental backups of my OS (but a complete backup after x incremental backups and auto-delete after say 2 years), easy to do a complete restore or just browse old files and a working reporting system (even mail will be enough, just don't say everything is fine when it isn't). I can't imagine something being more simple than those basic needs and I've yet to find anything decent. It would be nice to be able to take a daily backup for the last x days and then only keep one for every week for y weeks and then only keep one for every month for z months but I have completely given up my hope of finding something "advanced" enough to handle something like that.
- 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
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gaiusparx 15y ago
I use some of this advice: http://sanziro.com/2011/01/practical-guide-for-data-backup-on-the-mac.html http://sanziro.com/2011/01/practical-guide-for-data-backup-o...
seanp2k2 15y ago
>"Today is World Backup Day " Oops, looks like I forgot \slow grin\
- budmang 15y ago
  You...and 94% of everybody else I'm afraid: http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/12/94-of-computer-users-still-risk-data-loss/ http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/12/94-of-computer-users-st...
budmang 15y ago
I'd like to make one small plug for http://www.Backblaze.com http://www.Backblaze.com We're an online backup service that provides completely unlimited storage, external drive backup, versioning, etc. for $5/month. (And we're the Presenting Sponsor of World Backup Day.) We also open sourced our 135 TB Storage Pod for anyone to use. If you're not backing up - please start! (Using us or something.) If you are, please help your family and friends who almost certainly are not.
- aMoniker 15y ago
  Backblaze looks like a great service, but like other cloud-based backup services, it does not store "your operating system, applications, and temporary files." Out of curiosity, why is this? Are there copyright issues involved?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - budmang 15y ago
    We don't store your operating system or apps primarily because without taking a complete disk image, you wouldn't be able to reinstall them typically anyway. Thus, it would take more of your bandwidth to get the files backed up, but you wouldn't be able to use them. (And you may get a false sense of security about them.) In general, our goal is to backup your data - the things you can't get back.
- benohear 15y ago
  Satisfied Backblaze customer here. It's unintrusive in daily use and the few times I've had to restore a file it was painless. The fact that it is remote also means that it is fire / theft / water damage proof. Since we've got the Backblaze folks knocking around, here's the bits where I think it could be improved: 1. The initial backup can take weeks, and during that time tends to either saturate the ADSL line, or, if you throttle, runs too slowly to make decent progress. This is obviously a problem with any remote backup solution but it is also big pain point. I Wonder if you couldn't hook up with local providers with mega-lines (Apple stores for example, or some other large chain) where you could go do the initial backup for a fee. 2. I found restoring an older version of a file unintuitive - it would be nice to be able to see a history of changes per file.
chroma 15y ago
If you're patting yourself on the back for already having backups, do as the site says and practice restoring! It is a common mistake to set up backups but never test that they actually can be restored.
wazoox 15y ago
Under Linux, rdiff-backup is a must. I use it to maintains incremental backups since... ages. Under Mac OS, Time Machine does about the same (with a gui). rdiff-backup works on windows too, but Cobian Backup is good enough and free if you want a GUI.
ohm 15y ago
Super Flexible File Synchronizer and SyncToy are great programs for backup.
ShardPhoenix 15y ago
Backing up in the sense of maintaining a full copy of your harddisk seems increasingly unnecessary these days. Most of the stuff I would care about losing is effectively already backed up on Github, webmail, Facebook, Steam, etc.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  I don't think that counts as "backed up". Personally, I always try to make sure I have a mirrored copy of any of my data that I store with a third party, unless I feel comfortable with that data vanishing without warning.
  - huhtenberg 15y ago
    He's got the point though that only one's data needs to be backed up, not every single bit on the disk.
    - scraplab 15y ago
      That depends what you're trying to achieve. With a full disk clone you can lose a drive and be back up and running in minutes.
njharman 15y ago
This is an April's Fools joke, right?
sbenja 15y ago
Backblaze is the easiet backup out there. I don't have to tell it what to back up - it just knows. I don't know of any other backup that can do that. So, I definitely recommend Backblaze.

81 points by pinwale 15y ago

What backup software do you recommend? I just want to keep my external hard drive in sync, but at the moment I have to do that manually. (I'm using Windows, and I'm trying to avoid having to use cygwin, so rsync is not really an option)

peterhajas 15y ago
If that's all you want, I'm sure you can find a Windows equivalent to dd to run every day. Do a direct bit copy, and then your external disk will always be in sync with your internal disk.
- KingOfB 15y ago
  Should Checkout CloudPull for the mac for backing up google services. Yes, everyone should backup gmail. If you get hacked and all your email deleted, googles backups won't do you any good. Arq is a good backup-to-cloud service if you're conscious of where your data goes(S3) and who has the keys(Only you). They're both indie programmers out of Boston too, which may be some of my bias, but check'm out!
- mindslight 15y ago
  That's a terrible idea. Backing up with disk images will take a long time, erase your previous backup at the start, and not prevent against filesystem corruption.
Zakuzaa 15y ago
Dropbox for pc/mobile and Jungledisk for servers.
- jrgifford 15y ago
  Dropbox is for syncing, not backup. There is a difference, and people don't care about the difference until they run into problems.
  - lubos 15y ago
    Dropbox doesn't delete your files when you delete them from dropbox. You can always restore them later, I have used that feature countless of times. So Dropbox can act like a backup, I still use JungleDisk to backup my whole dropbox just to be safe.
    - ef4 15y ago
      By default Dropbox keeps 30 days of old versions. You can pay extra to bump that up to "forever".
    - jrgifford 15y ago
      Depends on what you mean by "backup". Backup to me (and most others that I've talked to) means "I can restore all my data, my entire hard drive, and be back to where I was yesterday, so if I screw up my kernel tonight, I can just use the backup to revert to my pre-kernel hacking spree". (to an average joe, it means the same thing, but not as much detail)
trotsky 15y ago
Have you tried the built in Win7 backup system? It's gotten considerably better over the years. Acronis True Image is a commercial solution (~$40) that may be a bit overkill for your needs but it does a good job and is feature rich.
gigantor 15y ago
After much trial and error, I've gone with the robust solution that's never failed me: robocopy.exe /MIR <source> <target> Create a scheduled task, set your external drive as the target, and forget. robocopy.exe is a built-in utility for Windows 7 and can be freely downloaded for via the resource pack. Also consider an offsite solution such as Windows Live Mesh for the free 5GB to create offsite backups of the most important folders. Never know when a catastrophic event (theft, fire) can take out your backups.
- benohear 15y ago
  Unless I'm misreading this, it only mirrors your drive with no history. That's a poor approach - if your drive starts packing in you're likely to backup a fair amount of corruption before you realize what's going on. Ditto if you screw up - you have to catch it before the next backup otherwise you're boned.
huhtenberg 15y ago
Bvckup [1] might be of some interest. I've been using it for a couple of years and it's a setup-and-forget kind of software. It's a bit dated, but a newer version is in works. [1] http://bvckup.com http://bvckup.com
icebraining 15y ago
Why not use Windows itself? It has a decent backup system. Alternatively, for syncing and not real backuping (no timestamped snapshots, for example), I've used FreeFileSync[1] successfully in the past. [1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/
- kijin 15y ago
  FreeFileSync is great if you just want to keep an up-to-date copy of everything and you don't need multiple incremental backups. It compares file size and timestamps and only copies files that have changed. You can save batch jobs as a file and click on it whenever you want to sync. You can even make the batch job autorun when you connect your external hard drive. Throw TrueCrypt into the mix, and you've got a pretty good and secure backup.
ph33r 15y ago
Been using the Freeware version Syncback for over 5 years now. Highly recommended: (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/index.html http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/index.html)
- cdvonstinkpot 15y ago
  Another happy SyncBack user here.

jrgifford 15y ago

Well, pinwale! It has been a long time. Nice to see that you're A. still alive, B. still doing awesome things like this. Keep up the good work!

pinwale 15y ago
Yeah, it has been awhile since the last Ubuntu release. Still thinking if we should do anything for the next ubuntu release.
- jrgifford 15y ago
  If you're going to, hit me up for managing your IRC channel or anything else like that. :)
  - pinwale 15y ago
    Thanks, I'll keep you in mind. :)

deleted 15y ago

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deleted 15y ago
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stephengoodwin 15y ago

Should we really suggest to people backing up using anything but remote backups?

huhtenberg 15y ago
How can you sincerely suggest remote backups if virtually none of them provide privacy provisions? If anything, people should be discouraged from using remote backups that are not encrypted at source.
- kijin 15y ago
  Virtually none of them? SpiderOak, Wuala, JungleDisk.
  - budmang 15y ago
    Agreed that backing up only in transit can be sketchy. Most online backup services (including ours, www.Backblaze.com) encrypt your data on your client. Also, we provide an option to use a private key in which case not only is it encrypted, but only you have the key. Of course, if you forget it the data is completely unrecoverable.
liw 15y ago
A remote backup can be very slow to restore, so having both local and remote backups may be worthwhile. It's more expensive, of course, so it's a judgement call, but it's too simplistic to say that everyone only ever needs one of them.
- kijin 15y ago
  Remote is slow to restore, but it's even slower to back up in the first place. With the current state of not-so-high-speed internet in North America, it could take several weeks to upload 100GB of pictures and videos.
  - 15y ago

tjoff 15y ago

I'd love to take more backups, but is there a decent backup software (paid or free) for Windows? I have my doubts... While I use the Win7 backup system on my WS it does make me feel a bit uneasy, I feel I have no control over it whatsoever. It doesn't do incremental backups. I have no say in how long they should be stored, the backups are stored in a weird way with hundreds of zip-files and I've found no easy way to browse them or restore just a lost file and I haven't even dared to use the restore options because I feel like I'm going to blow something up (so maybe you can do that, but the UI is just bad). Also I get no report that a backup was successful or if it has failed and I can't tell it to delete old backups). I've used Acronis True Image before and I really wanted to like it but... I used it to, among other things, back up some network drives. All was fine and I got confirmation that everything was fine every week, but one day I skimmed through the logs and found out that the network drives hadn't been backed up but Acronis still said that the whole operation was a success. I can't even begin to comprehend the absolute lunacy about ignoring some failures in a backup program. Maybe they've fixed this now but they have a long way to restore my trust. Also when doing incremental backups you can not anywhere state that I wan't a complete backup after x incremental backups. You have to manually move the old backups to force it to do a complete backup again, and it won't delete backups older than x months/years so you have to manually clean up or else your backups will constantly increase for all eternity. This should be about the third or fourth feature you implement in a backup program and all it would take is like 10 lines of code and a checkbox. So, still having a hard time to see how one couldn't be better than Acronis I stumbled upon EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation but you can't do incremental backups of your OS (seriously?), so I've resorted to doing incremental partition images but I'm mighty unimpressed by the GUI and I don't feel safe at all. Seriously guys, this shouldn't be hard! I just want incremental backups of my OS (but a complete backup after x incremental backups and auto-delete after say 2 years), easy to do a complete restore or just browse old files and a working reporting system (even mail will be enough, just don't say everything is fine when it isn't). I can't imagine something being more simple than those basic needs and I've yet to find anything decent. It would be nice to be able to take a daily backup for the last x days and then only keep one for every week for y weeks and then only keep one for every month for z months but I have completely given up my hope of finding something "advanced" enough to handle something like that.

15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

gaiusparx 15y ago

I use some of this advice: http://sanziro.com/2011/01/practical-guide-for-data-backup-on-the-mac.html http://sanziro.com/2011/01/practical-guide-for-data-backup-o...

seanp2k2 15y ago

>"Today is World Backup Day " Oops, looks like I forgot \slow grin\

budmang 15y ago
You...and 94% of everybody else I'm afraid: http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/12/94-of-computer-users-still-risk-data-loss/ http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/12/94-of-computer-users-st...

budmang 15y ago

I'd like to make one small plug for http://www.Backblaze.com http://www.Backblaze.com We're an online backup service that provides completely unlimited storage, external drive backup, versioning, etc. for $5/month. (And we're the Presenting Sponsor of World Backup Day.) We also open sourced our 135 TB Storage Pod for anyone to use. If you're not backing up - please start! (Using us or something.) If you are, please help your family and friends who almost certainly are not.

aMoniker 15y ago
Backblaze looks like a great service, but like other cloud-based backup services, it does not store "your operating system, applications, and temporary files." Out of curiosity, why is this? Are there copyright issues involved?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- budmang 15y ago
  We don't store your operating system or apps primarily because without taking a complete disk image, you wouldn't be able to reinstall them typically anyway. Thus, it would take more of your bandwidth to get the files backed up, but you wouldn't be able to use them. (And you may get a false sense of security about them.) In general, our goal is to backup your data - the things you can't get back.
benohear 15y ago
Satisfied Backblaze customer here. It's unintrusive in daily use and the few times I've had to restore a file it was painless. The fact that it is remote also means that it is fire / theft / water damage proof. Since we've got the Backblaze folks knocking around, here's the bits where I think it could be improved: 1. The initial backup can take weeks, and during that time tends to either saturate the ADSL line, or, if you throttle, runs too slowly to make decent progress. This is obviously a problem with any remote backup solution but it is also big pain point. I Wonder if you couldn't hook up with local providers with mega-lines (Apple stores for example, or some other large chain) where you could go do the initial backup for a fee. 2. I found restoring an older version of a file unintuitive - it would be nice to be able to see a history of changes per file.

chroma 15y ago

If you're patting yourself on the back for already having backups, do as the site says and practice restoring! It is a common mistake to set up backups but never test that they actually can be restored.

wazoox 15y ago

Under Linux, rdiff-backup is a must. I use it to maintains incremental backups since... ages. Under Mac OS, Time Machine does about the same (with a gui). rdiff-backup works on windows too, but Cobian Backup is good enough and free if you want a GUI.

ohm 15y ago

Super Flexible File Synchronizer and SyncToy are great programs for backup.

ShardPhoenix 15y ago

Backing up in the sense of maintaining a full copy of your harddisk seems increasingly unnecessary these days. Most of the stuff I would care about losing is effectively already backed up on Github, webmail, Facebook, Steam, etc.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
I don't think that counts as "backed up". Personally, I always try to make sure I have a mirrored copy of any of my data that I store with a third party, unless I feel comfortable with that data vanishing without warning.
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  He's got the point though that only one's data needs to be backed up, not every single bit on the disk.
  - scraplab 15y ago
    That depends what you're trying to achieve. With a full disk clone you can lose a drive and be back up and running in minutes.

njharman 15y ago

This is an April's Fools joke, right?

sbenja 15y ago

Backblaze is the easiet backup out there. I don't have to tell it what to back up - it just knows. I don't know of any other backup that can do that. So, I definitely recommend Backblaze.