Backup local drive to HawkHost


edwinbradford

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Hi Hawkhost,

I've been with you for a few months and very happy, a lot better than my previous hosts ;)

I have a professional portfolio of artwork that I want to backup to my Hawk Host disk space, local backup doesn't cut it for me in case of fire. I'm googling the options now, looking for some kind of incremental backup that is daily or weekly but only backs up files that have changed since the last backup to keep bandwidth down.

I just thought I'd check with you and see if there's anything in my control panel that does that? There's a lot in there I'm not familiar with. If not then I'm reading up on SSH, FTP is straightforward but I don't know if there's an incremental solution.

Cheers.

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There is nothing in the control panel that does this unfortunately. There is nothing on the server that could help you with doing incremental backups automatically. You can use rsync to keep the last copy of each file but that does not sound like what you want.

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Hi Tony,

Fast reply as expected :)

Actually rsync is probably the best solution, good information and great that you support it. Any projects I'm currently working on I can keep synchronized with rsync, archived projects can just be synchronized once and then I can discontinue synchronizing them and leave them on the server. DeltaCopy seems like the best way to run rsync on Windows.

Thanks for the prompt response.

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This is something I'd been wondering about myself since none of the professional subscription services sounded all that great to me, a lot of people reported the controls not working well or the incremental part not functioning right.

here's a freeware lite version with a lot of good-sounding features that can FTP (so it claims) which sounds like it might do the trick, although I haven't had a chance to try it out myself yet - plan to install it this weekend.

http://www.gfi.com/backup-hm

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Flyingship, I have a couple of articles here on rsync if you're interested first and second. If you're backing up lots of data you'll max out your bandwidth unless you only sync the data that's changed.

Apparently Windows applications pitched as syncing apps only check the date of the file so if you change one word in War and Peace it uploads the whole novel all over again. rsync will only upload the changed word, it seems to be the industry standard app for syncing. The articles here cover how to run rsync on Windows.

There's a lot of reading but I think its worth it, better than losing the last ten years work on a hard drive melt down :)

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I appreciate the input, because a) you're right, backup is crucial & before the horses are stolen, B) the backup options available are so complex nowdays and it's easy to *think* you're covered when you're not (though anything's better than trying to restore from tape, IMHO!)

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No problemo, actually, after I posted that I decided to go with Unison, it seems similar to rsync and from what I read is just as reliable but more up to date. I'm going to try it all out next week but the links I have are:

01

02

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04

Sorry I can't be more helpful, I haven't gone through it all yet. I think Unison is a little more cross platform and its still open source if I remember correctly.

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No problemo, actually, after I posted that I decided to go with Unison, it seems similar to rsync and from what I read is just as reliable but more up to date. I'm going to try it all out next week but the links I have are:

01

02

03

04

Sorry I can't be more helpful, I haven't gone through it all yet. I think Unison is a little more cross platform and its still open source if I remember correctly.

rsync has been around for ages and does wonders - the reason people utilize it is because of the incremental features, but also the ability to migrate files over an encrypted network (SSH,SSL) - depending on the nature of your files you may or may not want to worry about it (ex: portfolio pictures it's not a huge deal).

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I don't care much about the encryption, my work's not exactly top secret, but the incremental feature is what I'm really looking forward to. Portfolio movies or images can be enormous for some artists, mine are not too bad, incremental transfer is invaluable.

Can't wait to get it going. By the way you guys are amazing, you set up SSH on my account within minutes of my requesting it. If people ask me for a referral I'll send them to Hawk Host, good hosts at a good price are hard to find. Please don't get sold ;)

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I don't care much about the encryption, my work's not exactly top secret, but the incremental feature is what I'm really looking forward to. Portfolio movies or images can be enormous for some artists, mine are not too bad, incremental transfer is invaluable.

Can't wait to get it going. By the way you guys are amazing, you set up SSH on my account within minutes of my requesting it. If people ask me for a referral I'll send them to Hawk Host, good hosts at a good price are hard to find. Please don't get sold ;)

Thanks for the kind words - it means a lot when customers refer friends and family (can't get much personal)!

We have no intentions on selling - it's too much of a passion for everyone here to simply let it go. Plus our mascot wouldn't be too happy.

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