Re: Autobackup with OneDrive

[kalos]

as I said Yadis is supposed to send the files to the cloud versioned

-kalos (June 20, 2016, 03:29 PM)

you havent actually looked at Yadis, have you?
EDIT// AFAICS, it doesnt do that (ondrive would have to do that)

-tomos (June 20, 2016, 05:49 PM)

I have!
Yadis will send them to your OneDrive folder in Windows and from there they will be mirrored to the cloud

[tomos]

well, that's different from "Yadis is supposed to send the files to the cloud versioned" which prompted my comment. But it's not important.

[4wd]

Yadis will send them to your OneDrive folder in Windows and from there they will be mirrored to the cloud

-kalos (June 21, 2016, 03:57 PM)

I don't want to hold a local backup, I only need the cloud

-kalos (June 20, 2016, 03:29 PM)

Um .... but that's what you have now, two copies of the same files on your laptop plus a copy on OneDrive, (if you're doing the Yadis! thing).

If you didn't want the extra copy on your laptop all you need to do is create a Junction Link (as mentioned previously) in the OneDrive folder to the folder you want to mirror to the cloud.  You'll end up with one copy on your laptop and one in the cloud.

At the moment you're using twice the disk space.

Synchronizing any folder on your system with OneDrive

Worked fine here on 8.1 Pro.

[wraith808]

I've used that approach before... the only caveat that I found is when you have an application that accesses the symlink continually, some access can fail.  I didn't look into it anymore than that, I just found another way around it.  But I did want to point that out.

[kalos]

True, I just realised that I am going to use double the space in my hard drive for the same files.
Is there a solution for this? To directly backup in the cloud and not locally?

4wd I don't think your link will work very well. It doesn't seem to do versioning, I am not sure if it synchronizes locked/used files, etc.

[4wd]

True, I just realised that I am going to use double the space in my hard drive for the same files.
Is there a solution for this? To directly backup in the cloud and not locally?

-kalos (June 23, 2016, 08:08 PM)

Yes, Junction Links.

4wd I don't think your link will work very well. It doesn't seem to do versioning, I am not sure if it synchronizes locked/used files, etc.

You are going to use more than twice the amount of space on your local drive if you do versioning.  OneDrive only does versioning for recognised Office documents - so you either need to:

• recognise you are going to use more space on your local drive;
• find software that will allow you to do versioning in OneDrive cloud but then it will be synced back to your drive anyway;
• or find another cloud provider that does versioning.

One way to get local versioning without 3rd party software is to enable File History.

• Create a folder and share it, (to get a UNC path).
• Enable File History with the UNC path as the destination.
• Create a Junction Link in the OneDrive folder to the folder created in step 1.

All versioning will be done locally and then synced to OneDrive but you will use a lot of local drive space.

But you have the caveat @wraith pointed out above, (although I have never seen the problem on my server where I use Junction Links but it's also not used continually).

[kalos]

maybe we can write a clever backup software that will do versioning, but only store the differences in files in a restorable archive, not the whole files!
anyone wants to work together on that idea?

[tomos]

^ loads of backup software exist that do partial file backup. So yeah, you could use one of them. I use Syncovery which does that too, but IIRC only recommends using it for bigger files. (I use it e.g. for a database.)

rsync that wraith mentions does that too. No experience there myself.

[Stoic Joker]

While historically adverse to all things cloud...I have been experimenting with the Azure online backup as of late. And while it's not a free service, if you go with blob only cold storage (which compressed backups like Windows backup are) it is surprisingly economical.

I did bare metal backups on two servers to a staging area which resulted in ~364GB of data. The Azure backup software then compressed it down to ~150GB for upload to the cloud. This leaves plenty of space for versioning (which is totally automated) in the 1TB of (cold blob) storage you can get for $25 a month. There is also no fixed "package" rates so if you use less space - say 500GB for a given month - then it's only $12 for that month.

They do have a "premium" charge for downloads, but it's pennies per Gig, and uploads are free.


Just a thought.