I’m curious to know how you all backup your files and sync them across machines?
I use Dropbox 
I have a bunch of external hard drives with loads of redundancy and a mental note to “eventually deal with my backup problem” #firstworldproblems
I use Drive since I work so much with Google its just super handy!
OneDrive because it works well with my computer and they give me a tonne of space (which I’ll probably never use) due to my Office 365 subscription. I have a few files on Dropbox because some programs use it exclusively.
haha I do exactly what senocular said.
I also use dropbox
Hard drives are all well and good, but then how is the government going to know what you’re up to.
I see Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox… are these all the free tiers? I ask because they seem mostly similar in price when looking at 1TB, though no one mentioned Amazon Cloud Drive which is the cheapest and gives you unlimited storage.
I’ve used the Unlimited Photos tier of Amazon’s a little as it comes free with my Prime account, but I was never happy with the interface. It looks like they’ve done some improvements since then.
At a certain point, all of these services are pretty similar. I simply went with Dropbox because I got annoyed at OneDrive when they removed their placholders feature that would allow me to sync files on-demand while still giving me an icon in Explorer to indicate that the file exists.
If you have a Creative Cloud subscription, you get cloud storage from them as well haha.
I’m currently browsing Amazon for a new external hard drive to help me for when I finally tackle my backup problem. Somehow it feels counterproductive…
What are you all storing that require so much space? I mostly have school related stuff on OneDrive. I think I’ve used about 4 GB and would never even dream of using the full TB that they give me.
I also just realized that no one mentioned iCloud. I use it for music and backups, but the experience is entirely not transparent and one that I wouldn’t use if it didn’t work reasonably well with my phone.
I forgot all about it. They seem to have put some thoughts into workflow and cloudstorage. I have to read up on this…
I use dropbox (business), (lfs) github, bitbucket and most probably assets storage in creative cloud.
Cloudstorage in teams require more harddrivespace, not only is it your own stuff, but also everyone else that has to sit on some of your drives, preferable not on your system disk…
Old school stuff, projects. A few contain a bit of raw video which is hefty. PSDs can add up. Photos over the years add up. I have a bunch of music too.
I don’t have many movies, though. I have friends with a bunch of movies (where did they get all those movies??), which I could imagine also taking up quite a lot of space.
The worst part for me is the versions and redundancy. I didn’t use version control back then (if it was even readily available) so all my old school work has duplicates of itself from each day or few days of working on it in case of corruption or a massive screw up. Then I would make backups and copy backups onto a drive that had backups of the same data already and now copies of copies of copies of different versions of copies are all over the place. The sad thing is, I want to keep this stuff, but chances are I’m never going to look at it again, and the things I really wish I had were never backed up and lost forever
And my internal hard drive, as many gigs as it is, is almost entirely filled by games! Why are games so big nowadays? Battlefield 4 is like 60 gigs, and I haven’t played it in a while so I’m definitely down some expansions (if I ever got any to begin with).
So most of my “stuff” is on external drives. I have at least 7 floating around here, including the “master” drive I just bought today which is what I’m going to consolidate everything into. It also came with 200 GB of one drive storage for 2 yrs which is an added bonus
Most of the stuff I store will also never be looked at again, but I don’t want to delete it. I have recently started putting all of my old DVDs onto a hard drive so I can watch them again (my computer doesn’t have a DVD drive). I’m starting to wish I bought a bigger one. Also I should probably get another hard drive as a back-up. I thought about putting them on OneDrive, but I expect the uploading would take a frustratingly long time.
I’m always trying to be organized and systematic about backup but it is a constant challenge. I tend be a pretty random guy by natural inclination.
I use Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, and infrequently Dropbox, all free tier. I have some personal rules/policies about which to use for what, but gray or undecided areas often crop up.
Senocular (a name I recall from way back, good to see you 
) mentioned Amazon Cloud Drive. I also have Prime membership but have not started using that storage yet. Maybe I’ll have a look.
I also use the File History control panel built into Windows (I use Win 10) to back up to an external USB HDD. Additionally, I sometimes copy important files from that HDD to my Mac for further redundancy. (The Mac is old and slow so I don’t do any work on it).
I don’t like the way File History renames your files by adding a long-form date to it and it also doesn’t seem be manage changes/differences well. Any recommendations for a intelligent well-designed backup desktop app for Windows?
Hmm, each photo from my camera is 40MB or so, so they add up quickly. I think even on my old camera they were 15-20MB each… So a decade or so of that and you end up with lots of stuff to backup.
So far I’ve copied over a few gigs worth of Macromedia Director projects onto my new backup… back from a time when photos were definitely not 40MB each :stare:
Good thing you asked about this Kirupa! I’ve been struggling with this issue ever since I lost my 2 drives (1TB each) of insanely important work. Still got the drives safely hidden under my bed, hoping to recover it one day :sigh:
But thankfully, I’ve found the solution I’m most happy with and never looked back since. I’ve read all of your suggestions and it seems I’m the only one doing it this way.
I don’t use Drive, nor Dropbox, nor One Drive, nothing of what’s been mentioned.
What I do:
- Local backup (cloned by atleast 2 external drives)
- Cloud backup (of the same data)
Frequency of backups depends on personal preference. Explained as follows:
Step 1: I work from my laptop that contains all of my current projects (approx. 500 GB of data). I have 2 external drives that clone all new and modified files on a real-time or scheduled basis (which can be set). The software I use for this is, Bvckup 2. It’s one awesome program that does one thing PERFECTLY. Copies files from ‘source’ to ‘destination’ in sheer perfection. Be careful with this though, once over-written there’s no looking back. So in this case, I’ve got 3 copies of my work synced at all times: Laptop, External Drive 1, External Drive 2.
Question is, what if my house burns down and I lose everything? Well,
Step 2: www.backblaze.com
It’s a tiny little program that backs up everything on your computer on a real-time basis, always. BB offers unlimited storage, MAC / PC compatible, 30 day backup versions < This is amazing as you can revert any file you’ve accidentally overwritten if it’s within the 30 day period. Price? 5$ a month. Well worth the buck!
The great bit is you can connect and sync unlimited external drives and UNLIMITED STORAGE. There’s a lot more to this, which you can read on their site.
Only catch?
- No NAS drives (I can live with that)
- You should always sync your drive atleast ONCE a month. Else they wipe it off their servers.
I’ve been doing this since a year now and am loving it.
@senocular I’ve had issues with redundant files too. You can get some third party software to compare files and filter out the unwanted.
Hope this helps!
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How does this solution work with moved files? Does the backup copy the new location over and keep the old in the backup? Or is it smart enough to handle moved files in the backs as moved files?
This is something I worry about, because I’m constantly moving things around.