Cloud backup for personal use with auto sync function

[Mimen]

I love mybroadband forums. I hardly every buy anything before asking for advice here first. I have changed my mind about which product to buy many times due to the answers I get here.

For now I am looking for personal cloud backup solution with auto-sync software. I like Google drive but it presents you with a Drive folder you need so safe your content to for backing it up.

Is there a loud solution out there that I can trust which will automatically sync my folders on my C and D rive to the cloud as I work. My worry here is that I have a D and C drive and, when I used the native Window backup software, to a USB drive, it scrambled it.

 

[bekdik]

A simple solution would be to use a cloud drive together with Microsoft's Robocopy and scheduler. Robocopy will only copy changed files, so after the first time, it runs very fast.

If the files to be stored are limited to documents, your data may well fit on to one of the free cloud drives.

 

[Sinbad]

I use Acronis to back up my stuff to a NAS. It also has an option to make a second copy of each backup - you could configure it to put that in your cloud/dropbox/whatever folder.

Not really practical with ADSL though. 1mb/sec up is just too fkn slow.

 

[bekdik]

I use Acronis to back up my stuff to a NAS. It also has an option to make a second copy of each backup - you could configure it to put that in your cloud/dropbox/whatever folder.

Not really practical with ADSL though. 1mb/sec up is just too fkn slow.

A lot of the time it's not necessary to make an image copy of the disk drive, for instance to cater for the case of inadvertent deletion of a file or wanting to restore a file after a bad edit.

So, Acronis full backup to a local drive, plus the robocopy option for work in progress data will work. Of course, robocopy could be used to a local drive rather than cloud.

I use Acronis and Robocopy and it works well.

Slightly off topic, I have found that many of the commercial cloud backup solutions will split the data by date, so that many files are copied over and over into different years - the argument being that one might need to restore an old copy. What I have found is that where an annual copy is required, e.g. tax spreadsheet, many users will rename the copy as xxx2015, xxx2014, or to create a 2015, 2014 folder, which will be seen as different documents by robocopy. If the cloud backup software makes copies by date, the usage of cloud storage will grow enormously and so will the cost.

 

[Sinbad]

A lot of the time it's not necessary to make an image copy of the disk drive, for instance to cater for the case of inadvertent deletion of a file or wanting to restore a file after a bad edit.

So, Acronis full backup to a local drive, plus the robocopy option for work in progress data will work. Of course, robocopy could be used to a local drive rather than cloud.

I use Acronis and Robocopy and it works well.

Slightly off topic, I have found that many of the commercial cloud backup solutions will split the data by date, so that many files are copied over and over into different years - the argument being that one might need to restore an old copy. What I have found is that where an annual copy is required, e.g. tax spreadsheet, many users will rename the copy as xxx2015, xxx2014, or to create a 2015, 2014 folder, which will be seen as different documents by robocopy. If the cloud backup software makes copies by date, the usage of cloud storage will grow enormously and so will the cost.

Acronis does images (of my system disk, an SSD), and separately a file backup of my user areas.

 

[eddief1]

I use SugarSync for syncing and IBackup for daily incremental backups...works good so far.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Microsoft Onedrive.

Problem solved,, especially if you are on Windows 8 and up.

 

[dovij]

Definitely get a dedicated backup solution. I've used both Crashplan and Carbonite to great success - they're both around $60/year for unlimited backup, but Carbonite does not automatically backup video files.

The massive advantage to these solutions is that they are set and forget - you just point it to the folders you want backed up and it takes care of everything.