Considering New Backup Options

[target2019]

Yes, I just integrated my googledrive with File Explorer, but I haven't looked into whether it is duplicating the files on my hard drive or not.

I'd need more than the 15 free GBytes that I currently have to use that for backup.

I get around the 2GByte limit on file size on OneDrive by telling the backup app to split the files. Works OK so far.

Gotcha. I don't use gdrive for backup. I don't auto-synch entire My Documents folder to a cloud.

In My Documents folder, I have a folder "Google Drive" and I copy files to that which I need accessible on other devices. I thought you might try to copy your entire 2GB backup file into a folder that is synched automatically with their cloud. Could get confusing, though. If you copy such a thing to a shared folder, you'd want to exclude that from your local backup process.

Interesting how there are so many approaches to skinning this backup problem.

 

[Meadbh]

I too err on the side of keeping stuff around. But I use this too:

GrandPerspective

It looks over your disk and generates a nice graphical map of your files showing their sizes. It's very useful in finding giant files that I really don't need any more (movies, disk images, etc.). This is for Mac, but I'm sure there is something similar for the PC out there.



For backups I use TimeMachine. I have a local disk that I keep connected to my iMac and periodically connect to my MacBook. I also have another large disk that I keep in my safe deposit box that I fetch every month or two and let TimeMachine do its thing, then returning it to the safe deposit box.

This way I have a catastrophic backup that's fairly up to date and continuous backups for the dumb mistakes or hardware failures.

It would make a nice quilt, too!

 

[TromboneAl]

Here's an update:

I have my computer do a backup of the documents folder every Friday at 3 AM. It backs up to cloud storage, and it happens automatically. Getting the task scheduler to do this was a bear, because of all the gotchas. Some of the reasons it didn't work: Set to run only when plugged in, exe file has to be set to run as administrator, you must allow wake timers in the power options.

Each of those things had to be solved individually (via Googling), and there was no indication of why it wouldn't trigger.

But it will be nice to have the backups done unattended.

 

[NW-Bound]

I am no longer that patient to solve this kind of riddles. Or perhaps I do not care that much anymore to fight with the OS.

As stated earlier, I have a PC converted to a home server. I can turn it on remotely from my laptop, which roams on WiFi. Then, I initiate the backup manually whenever I remember about it.

The above is a full Windows back up. In between, I only have the Quicken file, a few data files, and new photos to backup. These, I backup to another standalone NAS server running 24/7. Quicken is directed to this NAS for its auto backup. This small server shuts down its hard drive during inactivity, so I do not feel bad about leaving it on.

I am still susceptible to the "big castastrophe", and need to think about storing on the cloud just the critical financial records. The bulk of the media files such as photos and MP3s are too big to put on the cloud, and will go on a USB drive placed in my motorhome.

 

[ERD50]

Here's an update:

I have my computer do a backup of the documents folder every Friday at 3 AM. It backs up to cloud storage, and it happens automatically. Getting the task scheduler to do this was a bear, because of all the gotchas. Some of the reasons it didn't work: Set to run only when plugged in, exe file has to be set to run as administrator, you must allow wake timers in the power options.

Each of those things had to be solved individually (via Googling), and there was no indication of why it wouldn't trigger.

But it will be nice to have the backups done unattended.

Something that would be far simpler, and almost as good, would to be to just set a pop-up reminder on Fridays. If you had this down to a one button operation while you are powered, that would be almost as good. That would eliminate all the complexities/gotchas of waking up and running a script unattended.

Now, how do you verify that it worked? Is that automated? How do you verify that?

My motto is -If you have not successfully restored from the back-up, you do not have a back-up.

I do it manually (and not often enough, so it is far from perfect), but I do open at least a few files on the backup for a sanity check.

So here's a question for the techies:

I see that others have said they have too much to put to the cloud. Here is what I was thinking - I do several full backups of my 'stuff' occasionally (I treat music, photos and videos separately), then I do incremental updates to those bases, until I decide to delete one and start a new base. Now, here is what could be handy for 'the cloud':

A) Make a full baseline back-up to several portable drives.
B) Do a full incremental backup to the cloud, but use the directory listing on the portable drive as a reference for the incremental backup.

This way, only the incremental stuff would be in the cloud.

I kind of did this a while back - I wrote some scripts that would back up files that were X days old (prompted for X), and it retained the directory structure. I had that set up to zip and store to USB, but I could redirect that to the cloud. But if you do this once per day, you end up with a bunch of files and you would need to do some searching to find something. Hmmmm .... OK, picture this as a daily routine for simplicity:

A) First run my 'recently changed' script to capture all the files that were changed in the one day since I backed up to portable drives, and store to the cloud unzipped.

B) Run my 'recently changed' script every day after that and capture files changed only within the last day (plus a few hours for overlap) - copy these temporarily to a directory on my hard drive.

C) Now do an incremental update to the cloud from that temp directory. Delete the temp directory. Repeat from 'B'.

That should build up all the changed files in one neat directory structure in the cloud. Baseline would be missing, but I have that on my backups. And I could sync from the cloud to my backups if my internal HD crashed, and have everything in one place. Assuming rsync works to the cloud, but I'm pretty sure it does.

Since only the daily changes go to the cloud, this should be fast.

Anyone see any problems? This should be easy to turn into a one or two button script.

-ERD50

 

[TromboneAl]

The problem with the manual system is you are using the computer, so the machine will run slower. So then you think, "I'll finish what I'm doing, then do the backup," and it often doesn't happen. I used that system for years, and often the Friday backup didn't happen.

It's quick to confirm that the new file exists, and If the app runs, it will be on my screen in the AM, so I'll know it ran.

The problem with the incremental system is that you aren't protected from a hard drive crash.

My auto backup takes only 7 minutes, and 20 of them will fit on the cloud drive.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

 

[ERD50]

The problem with the manual system is you are using the computer, so the machine will run slower. So then you think, "I'll finish what I'm doing, then do the backup," and it often doesn't happen. I used that system for years, and often the Friday backup didn't happen.

It's quick to confirm that the new file exists, and If the app runs, it will be on my screen in the AM, so I'll know it ran.

The problem with the incremental system is that you aren't protected from a hard drive crash.

My auto backup takes only 7 minutes, and 20 of them will fit on the cloud drive.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

A daily backup is really, really quick, and doesn't bog down the machine (yes, will slow disk access a bit, for less than a minute probably). Rsync uses low level commands (grsync provides a GUI if you prefer), it is fast and efficient.

Why am I not protected from a hard drive crash with incremental? That's not true. I have a baseline complete backup on multiple portable drives, the incremental simply adds any changed or new files to that baseline.

OK, if you are talking about the system being backed up, yes, this is for data. I use some other strategies for system backup. But that isn't an incremental versus full back up issue, it's a system-wide versus data-only issue.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

The problem with the manual system is ....

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to say one way is better than the other (manual/auto). They each have pros/cons, people should choose whatever works for them.

-ERD50

 

[TromboneAl]

Why am I not protected from a hard drive crash with incremental? That's not true. I have a baseline complete backup on multiple portable drives, the incremental simply adds any changed or new files to that baseline.

Sorry, I was at starbucks, read quickly, and thought you said that the first, full backup was on the main drive.

Incrementals are amazing for saving space, but when you are stressed about finding a particular file, it's nice to just have one single, simple location for that file.

Note that File History on Windows 8.1 also automatically backs up files full time (backing up each time you save one).

 

[ERD50]

...

Incrementals are amazing for saving space, but when you are stressed about finding a particular file, it's nice to just have one single, simple location for that file. ...

I use rsync/grsync - it doesn't work that way (or I would not use it!). My backups look exactly like my source.

When you run it, it does a compare from SOURCE to DESTINATION, if the file in the DESTINATION is older (or non-existent), it over-writes (or copies) it. So everything is in one place, the DESTINATION looks exactly like your SOURCE. You can configure it differently, but I have it not delete files that are in the DESTINATION but not the SOURCE. So if I accidentally delete something, it will be on my backup. But over time, your DESTINATION can get larger than your SOURCE (but not by a lot, unless you change a large directory structure or something, which could make everything under it look 'new').

edit/add - OK, if I were to put the incrementals on the cloud, yes, I'd need to merge them with the baseline on my portable drive to have them all in one place. Currently though, I do the incremental to my portable drives, so everything is in one place. Considering how few times (probably never) that I'd need to go to the cloud incrementals, I'm not too worried about that, I'll still update my portables regularly.

Note that File History on Windows 8.1 also automatically backs up files full time (backing up each time you save one).

Nice, but I'm always nervous about a backup to the same drive (I'm assuming here), but great protection against the accidental delete or oooops!

-ERD50

 

[Katsmeow]

OK, this is a think going to be a "dumb" question. But, here it goes.

I actually have all kinds of cloud storage from Google Drive to Dropbox to OneDrive. I subscribe to Office 365 and they are just about to raise the OneDrive limit for each user from 20 GB to 1 TB making this suddenly very useful to me for backup purposes. So here is the question.

I set up One Drive as a folder and it wants me to put Documents, Pictures, etc. in there. Now, lets use Document as an example.

If put my Documents folder in the One Drive folder:

1. Are the Documents now going to automatically be synced to the One Drive folder on the cloud?

If so, if I delete a file on my notebook will that delete it on the cloud as well? If so, the what is on the cloud isn't really acting as a back up as it will get deleted there as well. What I want is to be able to have my documents on my notebook be on the OneDrive in the cloud storage, but if I delete something by mistake I want to be able to go get it from the cloud storage.

If the cloud storage is identical to what is in the Documents folder in the OneDrive folder, is the solution to the problem above to keep two copies of my documents. One in my "regular" Documents folder and then another in the One Drive documents folder and then periodically sync those two. That way if I delete something by mistake in my regular folder I can still get it from the Documents folder in the OneDrive folder?

2. Will the Documents in the OneDrive folder be only in the OneDrive folder on the cloud or will they be in both places? That is, locally on the hard drive and on the cloud?

3. Let's say I have another computer (which I do) and I put its Documents folder in the One Drive folder on that computer (I am the user on both computers). Will the documents in that Documents folder be synced on the cloud into a separate documents folder as the documents from my notebook or will all the documents be mixed together on the OneDrive in the cloud?

(I may have other questions, but they depend on the answers to these.)

 

[meierlde]

Note that you have to create a share point on the drive for file history to back up to the same drive, it is do able but takes more work it tries to avoid backing up to the same drive.
There is an MS tool called synctoy that will synchronize two file trees, but just keep the last copy. When I tried file history it kept backing up all files in the tree about every 3 days. While you can then clean up to all but the last copy, but then its just an automatic synctoy.

 

[imoldernu]

I don't do machine back ups... I have 8 working computers and a few tablets. Most of them have the same info, transferred at one time or another for some forgotten reason. All are old.
Last week after trying hard to reduce start up time on my vista machine, lost patience, shredded all and started from scratch. Out of curiosity, used search "Everything" for the stuff I'd like to keep... After stripping duplicate files with SlimCleaner and Glary, still have 42,000 jpg's, 7900 mp3's, and 8000 txt's.

Copies of all important documents on an 8G thumb drive and on Google drive.

Since I've never paid for software of any kind, anything I use I can download again for free.

I am reminded of something a w*rk enemy said to me as I was closing out the last of my company's franchise operations, and working myself out of a job.....

"See that pail of water? If I put my hand in it, and then take it out... that's how much you'll be missed."

It stuck with me, and now my philosophy of life has changed. What I had saved for my heirs and posterity... essays, writings, studies, arguments, photography, music, genealogies, and lifetime accomplishments, family history etc... all of this will go to the landfill. My kids have enough challenges in life, and I won't add to them by placing a guilt complex on their conscience.

 

[photoguy]

A) First run my 'recently changed' script to capture all the files that were changed in the one day since I backed up to portable drives, and store to the cloud unzipped.

B) Run my 'recently changed' script every day after that and capture files changed only within the last day (plus a few hours for overlap) - copy these temporarily to a directory on my hard drive.

C) Now do an incremental update to the cloud from that temp directory. Delete the temp directory. Repeat from 'B'.

That should build up all the changed files in one neat directory structure in the cloud. Baseline would be missing, but I have that on my backups. And I could sync from the cloud to my backups if my internal HD crashed, and have everything in one place. Assuming rsync works to the cloud, but I'm pretty sure it does.

Since only the daily changes go to the cloud, this should be fast.

Anyone see any problems? This should be easy to turn into a one or two button script.

-ERD50

Do you have your own server to run as destination for rsync? I don't think the existing cloud backup services let you have as much control as rsync with the command line options.

You may not need to roll your own script. I think rsync has the ability to copy files by date and also put the incremental changes in a specific directory.

Rsync won't support file versioning so you lose that ability. I guess you could modify your script to put incremental backups in different directories by time.

Your script is based on date but I think there are some file operations that may not change the timestamp. E.g. if I copy/ftp/download a file from somewhere else (say another computer) will my copy have the original date and not the the date of the copy? When you download photos from your phone, will the file date be the date of the download? or the date you took the photo?

Overall I guess the main danger is that the process is more complex which means bugs/errors can come into play.

 

[TromboneAl]

OK, this is a think going to be a "dumb" question. But, here it goes.

I actually have all kinds of cloud storage from Google Drive to Dropbox to OneDrive. I subscribe to Office 365 and they are just about to raise the OneDrive limit for each user from 20 GB to 1 TB making this suddenly very useful to me for backup purposes. So here is the question.

I set up One Drive as a folder and it wants me to put Documents, Pictures, etc. in there. Now, lets use Document as an example.

If put my Documents folder in the One Drive folder:

1. Are the Documents now going to automatically be synced to the One Drive folder on the cloud?

If so, if I delete a file on my notebook will that delete it on the cloud as well? If so, the what is on the cloud isn't really acting as a back up as it will get deleted there as well. What I want is to be able to have my documents on my notebook be on the OneDrive in the cloud storage, but if I delete something by mistake I want to be able to go get it from the cloud storage.

If the cloud storage is identical to what is in the Documents folder in the OneDrive folder, is the solution to the problem above to keep two copies of my documents. One in my "regular" Documents folder and then another in the One Drive documents folder and then periodically sync those two. That way if I delete something by mistake in my regular folder I can still get it from the Documents folder in the OneDrive folder?

2. Will the Documents in the OneDrive folder be only in the OneDrive folder on the cloud or will they be in both places? That is, locally on the hard drive and on the cloud?

3. Let's say I have another computer (which I do) and I put its Documents folder in the One Drive folder on that computer (I am the user on both computers). Will the documents in that Documents folder be synced on the cloud into a separate documents folder as the documents from my notebook or will all the documents be mixed together on the OneDrive in the cloud?

(I may have other questions, but they depend on the answers to these.)

From what I've seen, OneDrive just acts as a another drive. There is no syncing. So "putting the documents folder on OneDrive" just means that you would decide that that is where you will keep all your documents. You could move what you have, and put new ones there in the future. If you access it with a different computer, it will just act as if you plugged that drive into the other computer.

That's how it works for me, though I keep my documents on my laptop's hard drive. I want to be able to access them in the internet is down.

 

[ERD50]

I don't do machine back ups... I have 8 working computers and a few tablets. Most of them have the same info, transferred at one time or another for some forgotten reason. ...

Copies of all important documents on an 8G thumb drive and on Google drive.

.... What I had saved for my heirs and posterity... essays, writings, studies, arguments, photography, music, genealogies, and lifetime accomplishments, family history etc... all of this will go to the landfill. My kids have enough challenges in life, and I won't add to them by placing a guilt complex on their conscience.

If you have the same stuff on multiple machines, isn't that a 'machine backup'? And the 'Copies of all important documents on an 8G thumb drive and on Google drive', isn't that a 'machine backup'? I don't understand your distinction here.

I'm also not following you on the guilt trip for your kids? Who is going to send it to the landfill? How will they know if it should be kept or not?

I've procrastinated, but I should put the stuff that I think could be worth keeping on a drive, label it and let them know about it. If they want to trash it, that's fine, but at least they will know that's it. They don't need to worry about searching through all my other trivia, wondering if some important document is tucked away in there somewhere.

Do you have your own server to run as destination for rsync? I don't think the existing cloud backup services let you have as much control as rsync with the command line options.

You may not need to roll your own script. I think rsync has the ability to copy files by date and also put the incremental changes in a specific directory.

Rsync won't support file versioning so you lose that ability. I guess you could modify your script to put incremental backups in different directories by time.

Your script is based on date but I think there are some file operations that may not change the timestamp. E.g. if I copy/ftp/download a file from somewhere else (say another computer) will my copy have the original date and not the the date of the copy? When you download photos from your phone, will the file date be the date of the download? or the date you took the photo?

Overall I guess the main danger is that the process is more complex which means bugs/errors can come into play.

Good points, I'll check that out. This WIP plan for my 'cloud incrementals' is really just interim daily backups in between an (weekly?) incremental to my portable drive - that would pick up everything. So if I lose something in the cloud that was downloaded with an older date, it's probably not a big deal. But something to consider.

Writing the script was a learning experience for me, I had not done that in Linux, and wanted some experience. It's kind of fun to be able to customize something to do exactly what you want, and they seem to run so much faster than the equivalent GUI steps (in some cases).

But this has me thinking about another idea I had - let's see if I can explain this:

Could rsync be set up to create a baseline directory/catalog of all the files/folders, but without the actual files? The idea would be do a full backup to a portable drive, and tell rsync that today's catalog represents that baseline. The next day, point rsync to a new destination folder, and let rsync update that folder with the past day's changes, and update that baseline catalog to 'today'.

The idea there is, you could have say two full baseline backups on portable drives, but the 'changes only' incrementals would be small, and could be put on a USB stick or the cloud, as they would be small w/o the full baseline.

If that new destination was in the cloud, only the days changes would be uploaded, and you never had to upload the larger baseline to the cloud. But it also looks to be a little tricky to get rsync to work with google-drive in Linux, but there may be workarounds. Google drive isn't really as simple as a network drive, which I believe rsync handles fine.

-ERD50

 

[Katsmeow]

From what I've seen, OneDrive just acts as a another drive. There is no syncing. So "putting the documents folder on OneDrive" just means that you would decide that that is where you will keep all your documents. You could move what you have, and put new ones there in the future. If you access it with a different computer, it will just act as if you plugged that drive into the other computer.

That's how it works for me, though I keep my documents on my laptop's hard drive. I want to be able to access them in the internet is down.

This is clear as mud to me.

So, the documents that are on OneDrive. Are they on my notebook's hard drive or are they only in the cloud?

If the internet goes down, does that mean I have no access to them while it is down?

If so (they are only on the cloud) then it would seem to me I only want to keep a copy of them on OneDrive).

 

[ERD50]

This is clear as mud to me.

So, the documents that are on OneDrive. Are they on my notebook's hard drive or are they only in the cloud?

If the internet goes down, does that mean I have no access to them while it is down?

If so (they are only on the cloud) then it would seem to me I only want to keep a copy of them on OneDrive).

Then the best approach is to just try it and see what happens. Sometimes that adds clarity when word descriptions sound confusing.

But it sounds like you want to save what you work on to your local drive as always, then copy that to the cloud. Then you have a local copy for when you don't have internet access, and a cloud copy as back up.

Try it and see.

-ERD50

 

[rbmrtn]

This is clear as mud to me.

So, the documents that are on OneDrive. Are they on my notebook's hard drive or are they only in the cloud?

If you COPY the file to onedrive it is available on both. If you MOVE the file to onedrive it is available on onedrive only. If you SAVE the file to onedrive, same thing. If you are syncing then changes in one location are copied to the other. GoogleDrive works about the same.

onedrive FAQ , OneDrive: FAQ - Windows Help

Why are some files in my OneDrive only available when I'm online, and how can I make them available offline?
The files you added to OneDrive from your PC or previously opened on your PC are automatically available offline on that PC. Any files you created on the OneDrive website or another computer are online-only to save space on your PC.

 

[rbmrtn]

I
Could rsync be set up to create a baseline directory/catalog of all the files/folders, but without the actual files? The idea would be do a full backup to a portable drive, and tell rsync that today's catalog represents that baseline. The next day, point rsync to a new destination folder, and let rsync update that folder with the past day's changes, and update that baseline catalog to 'today'.

The -dry-run option might be close to what you want. It runs rsync without actually touching the files, so can you see what rsync would have done. But rsync doesn't keep a catalog, it calculates what it needs to do each run.

You might have to make use of pipes and scripting. Maybe pipe the output of find to rsync. something like this bash - find and rysnc? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

 

[TromboneAl]

This is clear as mud to me.

1. So, the documents that are on OneDrive. Are they on my notebook's hard drive or are they only in the cloud?

2. If the internet goes down, does that mean I have no access to them while it is down?

3. If so (they are only on the cloud) then it would seem to me I only want to keep a copy of them on OneDrive).

Think of a little box taped to your computer. That's your computer's drive. Now think of another box on the shelf of you closet. That's the OneDrive.

You write on some paper and put it in the box on your computer. That's available to you even if you shut the door to the closet. You can take that paper out and put it in the box in the closet. If the door to the closet is closed, you can't get to it.

Note that you could also make a Xerox of the paper so that you have one in the computer box, and another in the closet box. But, if you change one, the other won't be changed.

And the answers to your questions are:

1.If you move the docs to onedrive, they are not on your computer, and they are only on onedrive.

2. Yes, if the internet is down, you have no access to the docs on onedrive (closet door is closed and locked).

3. Yes, if there's something you may need when the internet is down or unavailable, you'd only want copies on onedrive. That's why I use it for backup.

 

[ERD50]

The problem with the manual system is you are using the computer, so the machine will run slower. So then you think, "I'll finish what I'm doing, then do the backup," and it often doesn't happen. I used that system for years, and often the Friday backup didn't happen. ...

It always seemed lightening fast to me, and this thread has me looking back to check things out, so I ran the scripts and tried to time it, and I couldn't - it was done in a blink.

So I modified some more files, some buried deep in the directory, so I had a total of ~ 34MB of files modified in the last two days, and ran my '2 day' script. If you are just working on a few spreadsheets and word processing, you'd likely mod less than 34MB in a day, but of course that could be all over the map. And I limit this to my 'documents' and 'desktop' - I don't worry about daily backups for other stuff, that gets picked up less often.

The longest portion seems to be the zipping, and everything was completed in less than two seconds. That does not include copying it to the cloud or a USB stick, but that should also be pretty fast.

For ref, here is my script (I have 3x as many lines documenting what it does, but this is the code):

mkdir -p ~/000_Recent_File_Backup_*SAVE*
NOW=$(date +000-%Y%m%d--%d%b%Y-%T)
find ~/Documents/ -ctime -1 -exec cp --parents --preserve=timestamps {} ~/000_Recent_File_Backup_*SAVE*/ \;
find ~/Desktop/ -ctime -1 -exec cp --parents --preserve=timestamps {} ~/000_Recent_File_Backup_*SAVE*/ \;
cd ~/000_Recent_File_Backup_*SAVE*
zip -r ./$NOW home/

BTW, the 'ctime' command detects any change in the file attributes (copy, rename, move from one place to another), even if the "modified date" shows an older date.

I'm guessing that one reason this can run so fast is that I have an indexing program running (indexes the files and content, so you can do searches like the Spotlight feature on a Mac), and any file mod updates the index at the time you make that change. So I think it must access that index, so the changes are already recorded, it doesn't need to search the whole directory to 'find' what has changed.

-ERD50

 

[rbmrtn]

I'm guessing that one reason this can run so fast is that I have an indexing program running (indexes the files and content, so you can do searches like the Spotlight feature on a Mac), and any file mod updates the index at the time you make that change. So I think it must access that index, so the changes are already recorded, it doesn't need to search the whole directory to 'find' what has changed.

-ERD50

find doesn't use a index or database, but locate does. locate can be faster when searching more space. updatedb usually runs as a cron job to update locates database. locate can also be told which db to use.

 

[kcowan]

I have never backed up my computers. I do have multiple backups for any personal files, like spreadsheets, documents and pictures. I have 5 computers in two geographic locations. I use WD external drives (x2) to keep all the personal stuff synchronized.

Whenever I have had a problems with the system, I use a computer shop to get it right. This has only happened twice in 10 years so think that is pretty good return for not doing all those system backups.

I use Karen's replicator which does backup only changed files. After she died, I was concerned about support, but her app just keeps working, even for Win7.

For portable devices, we use iTunes and iCloud.

(I have been purging physical stuff extensively this year. Got rid of all those Zip Drives that I never had to use for backup. And my CDs and DVDs that I never used for backup. Sometimes I wonder about all the effort we expend, just in case.)

 

[ERD50]

find doesn't use a index or database, but locate does. locate can be faster when searching more space. updatedb usually runs as a cron job to update locates database. locate can also be told which db to use.

I was curious, so went back further to a 30 day incremental. This was still only ~ 55MB, but it was across 163 items. I added some timers at several points in the program, and created an empty dir with a label and that time appended.

It still took just 2 seconds for the find/copy, and 2 seconds to zip it. Fast enough, I won't worry about any optimization. It makes me wonder if all that catalog info is cached, that still seems very fast to me. No matter, it works great, I'm just curious.

I have never backed up my computers. I do have multiple backups for any personal files, like spreadsheets, documents and pictures. I have 5 computers in two geographic locations. I use WD external drives (x2) to keep all the personal stuff synchronized. ...

To my way of thinking, you are backing up your computers, but it sounds like you are saying you back up the data, not the system. Which is reasonable for some.

I prefer to have a total system back-up (clone) too. That was EZ on Macs with "SuperDuper!" The fantastic feature of Macs is you can clone to an external, and immediately re-boot right into that clone to verify it. I think in Windows, you need to re-install from the backup, which is a Catch-22 for testing your clone. And I have not found an EZ way to do that in Linux either - all the various things I've read about have limitations I don't like. But it really isn't that hard to re-install the system, and I recently made a video that captured most of my setup changes, so that procedure is documented, but I'd rather have a bootable clone. I do have some other Linux installs on portable drives that are configured pretty close to my daily system, so if I did crash, I could boot from those and be 99% of the way there anyhow.

-ERD50