Backups

I hate backups, I really do… Even more than I hate printers 🙂

But, as recent happenings proved again, you definitely need one… Either being it for a virus or ransomware, or a failing hard disk, or even if you just delete something (why would you delete something?)

I’ve been looking around for a good off-site backup for ages, but never found a “good” (read: cheap) one… If you look at cloud-hosted backup solutions such as backblaze, crashplan, …, you’re always going to spend more than $50 yearly… (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp)
I always figured, yeah, that’s the price of a physical disk you can keep forever…

Anyway, next issue, backup software… If someone can give me a tool that just actually works… PLEASE be my guest…
In the past I’ve used the build-in Windows one… But that one failed terrible resulting in me losing a lot of pictures… 😦

One of my last interests was backup up to Amazon’s Glacier service… But never took the actual step.

 

Last week, I took two steps!

 

Azure Simple File

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/files/

A couple of months ago, a new “feature” was made available on Azure. Basically it’s just an oldskool file server in an Azure datacenter… Meaning: accessible over smb 🙂

\\fileserver.onmicrosoft and you’re good to go!
Jieehaa!
No shitty REST-interfaces! 🙂

It’s SMB 3.0, so authentication, encryption and data integrity are handled by the protocol 🙂 (hey, you’re communicating over a public network, of-course you’ll need that!)

Having a “regular” interface to the cloud opens possibilities… But, bringing me back to my earlier point of having the right tool for the job…
I don’t trust the file-history any more, so I’m looking around for other tools…

Currently running Iperius -> http://www.iperiusbackup.com/
Curious how that’s going to turn out…
It doesn’t have a restore option? WTF?

Azure Backup

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/backup/

Another service I’m testing on Azure is the Backup functionality.

It comes with a client application. Install, configure, select data and you’re good to go! This app definitely impressed me!

I know it says “failed”, one of the big issues with cloud storage is your upload speed… As I’m only a Belgian internet user, I’m stuck with a 5 mbit upload rate over adsl… So uploading 120GB takes forever… (forever being 2.5 days). So, on a daily schedule, after a day, the previous backup hasn’t finished yet 🙂
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/4976075067

Big plus, I crossed my “downloadlimit” uploading 650GB on backup data 😦
JEEEEJ CLOUD

Did I tell you it’s slow as hell?
And you have to pay extra for outbound network traffic, aka: to restore data you have to pay more…

I’m even considering installing this on all computers from my family!

Cloud Storage

Sometimes, you just want to store files in the cloud. This because you want your data to be available everywhere. Or you want a offsite backup. Or you want to share it with someone.

Anyway, you have to put it SOMEWHERE.
And preferable, somewhere secure, and not to expensive.

Now, you have the classic hosting providers. Providing you with an http/ftp capable webspace.But, as always, that’s a bit expensive…

When you start looking around, for backup, archive or file hosting services, you stumble upon the classic tools like dropbox, skydrive, backblaze, crashplan, …

But, in my case, that’s also not something I’m looking for.
I just want to mount a “cloud-drive” via a webservice, ftp or webdav. It can even has it own tool, as long as the actual files stay in the cloud…

So, into “the big three”: Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Windows Azure Storage blobs… Pricing is on the right of this blogpost.

Still… They’re like 5-10€/month for 100GB… That’s 100€ per year.
With 100€ you can buy yourself a 1000GB hard disk, and put it on your desk and revproxy the thing?
Even with the electricity cost you’re not going to hit that 100€ limit…

Or buy a new hard drive each year, and put the old one somewhere safe! At a friend’s house, in your basement, you can even bury it in your garden ^^

I was considering getting an Azure subscription, now not any more 🙂

Backups again

I hate backups.
I sincerely do…

But that doesn’t change the fact it’s a thing that has to be done…

In the past I used synctoy as primary backup solution…
But it didn’t stop some files from getting lost…

The point was: some files got corrupted somehow, and where copied to my “backup” location. And because synctoy cannot perform incremental backups, some pictures got lost forever 😦

Anyway, I’ve experimented a lot lately to surpass this issue.
I needed incrementals…
And one of the best applications I’ve tested lately was Genie Timeline Backup from Genie9. It’s even free! (limited options)

I tried some more “classic” backup solutions like Acronis, … And some open source packages. But none of them where “worth using”.
To slow, to many options, to large (backup software using 500mb of disk space?), aggressive file copies, cpu intensive background tasks, …

Luckily for me, Windows 8 comes with File History!
A pretty good copy of Apple’s Time Machine…

I’ve been using this for some time now, tried restoring some random things, and until now I like it…

Until now…

Batch scripting

So my desktop is in Ghent, my “nas” is not.  My backup drive, a Lacie Internet Space with 1 TB is available trough my VPN. This is how I nowadays take my backup of my desktop, syncing 3 folders over the internet using a vpn, synctoy and some batch-scripting 😎 first an echo to show the options
followed by a choice (switch/case shizzle)
rasdial to establish the VPN
deleting previously mapped network drives
recreating the network drives
backing up using synctoy
shutdown 😀


@echo off
cls
echo 1. Met shutdown
echo 2. Zonder shutdown
choice /c:12
call :%errorlevel%
:1
echo metshutdown!
rasdial "MendelVPN" mendel apassword
echo deleting
net use x: /delete
echo running synctoy!
net use y: "\\192.168.2.21\MijnBestanden\MijnFoto's" /user:mendel apassword
echo connected, backing up
"e:\SyncToy 2.1\SyncToyCmd.exe" -R "Pics BCKP"
echo succes!
net use y: /delete
rasdial "MendelVPN" /DISCONNECT
shutdown -s -t 300
goto :EOF
:2
do the same without shutdown