Backup forum

tonyrees · 2022-01-08 03:17:52

Hi all, I set up a new IDrive account a few months back and managed to backup relevant portions of my main laptop and a couple of external drives, over the space of several weeks of file transfer (slow upload link), around 400 GB files in total. These files/containing directories now appear under my "Cloud Backup" tab in IDrive via the IDrive web interface on my laptop, also visible (as planned) via a few Android devices that I intended to sync but did not quite figure out how to. I have not engaged any "sync" actions as yet on my devices, although I may have done something incomplete along that direction, because every day I get an IDrive message saying "sync action failed - there are no files to back up" or similar (maybe will return to that in due course).

Anyway, today I added some more files/folders to my laptop (audio ones) and wanted to upload them manually (perhaps a bad idea) to what I have presently on IDrive. I looked for a way to manually upload individual items to the relevant locations in the "Cloud Backup" location but this did not seem to be possible, but I read online that it was possible to do manual uploads via the "Sync and Cloud Storage" tab so for now, I have added them there without a problem (result and interface looks similar to a Dropbox or mega.nz operation, with which I am a little familiar, or indeed any other file transfer between discs etc. )

So my question is, having placed files in the location "sync', is it possible to then move them to "Cloud Backup", or is that not an option. If not, maybe I have done the wrong thing and should be engaging some overall backup/refresh type strategy so that the new files end up in the same location as the old ones, mirroring how they are on the laptop/external drive. Alternatively I could live with a "temporal split" and just accept that the initial 400 MB of files are all under "Cloud backup", and new additions will live under "sync"...

Obviously I do not have a complete understanding of how IDrive works and how best to interact with it at this time... maybe I should just try to sync all my devices... I did have a brief play with this option when I first got my IDrive account but seemed to hit a few walls, however could try again...

Any advice appreciated!

Cheers - Tony Rees, Australia

Last edited by tonyrees (2022-01-08 03:56:06)

tonyrees · 2022-01-08 03:51:50

A flow-on question... I am looking again into setting up either a manually triggered, or scheduled backup; at present I have navigated to the "select files/folders for backup" set-up box for my particular laptop. However this seems to see only my C\ drive and directories on there, although I have a D\ (external) drive connected, and that is the location from which I did my initial backup (appears as a searchable location in the existing backups directory, with contents there as expected) and where the new files have been added that I should like to upload... as before, any advice appreciated. I have checked, D\ appears in my Windows file explorer, but apparently not in my IDrive Dashboard > Computers > Select files/folders for backup options (unless I have missed something of course)

Regards - Tony

Last edited by tonyrees (2022-01-08 03:53:05)

SteveA · 2022-01-08 11:58:03

The Sync and Backup products work independently. Files you synchronize don't come out of your Backup allowance. I'm not aware of a way to move files between the IDrive products without going back through your computer.

It would be dangerous to rely on Sync as your backup, because if you accidentally deleted files on one computer, they would disappear from all your computers. Also Sync doesn't do versioning so if you suffered a ransomware attack you wouldn't be able to roll-back the files to a good version.

With regards to your D:\ drive, you should be able to select files from the Change button, but you might not see the selections until you expand the Mapped and External drive files for Online backup V section below the Files / folders for online backup section.

If your D:\ drive is missing completely - I'm not sure why that would be! Is it a directly connected drive, or a network connected drive? In the settings section of the IDrive client, there is a Mapped Drive Setup option where you can provide credentials if needed.

tonyrees · 2022-01-08 19:10:12

Thanks SteveA... for the advise RE not using "sync" as a repository for files. OK, bad idea!

I tried a few times to get my D:\ drive to show in the IDrive scheduler, with no luck (the web page version), but opened the app page instead and it was there, so incremental back up in progress as we speak - hopefully that will solve my problem. I did go to Windows Explorer and right clicked the external drive, which gives a "backup now" option, but that tried to start up a full backup (300 GB+) which was not what I wanted, and also would have quickly used up this month's data allowance... Having killed that process, I tried to replicate the action for test purposes and could not get it to repeat at all! However no harm done, hopefully.

Once I have verified that the incremental backup on D:\ has worked OK, I will delete the files uploaded to sync, and not attempt to upload there again unless there really are files that I want to sync across multiple devices.

I guess my experience is coloured by a decade or more of simply backing up files (making safety copies) via manual drag-and-drop to different media, locations or devices, and I was expecting IDrive to be similar, which it isn't (except in the sync function). All good, learning as we go!!

Cheers - Tony

Last edited by tonyrees (2022-01-08 19:33:29)

tonyrees · 2022-01-09 03:04:34

OK, all seems good now, thanks. Rather than incremental backup I have switched over to just back up selected "new" folders in their entirety, since the incremental backup seemed to spend a fair bit of time scanning files that had not changed (also the display kept switching between indicating "incremental" and "full" backup for no obvious reason - definitely did not want a full backup again via my very slow internet connection!)

Thanks for the assistance. I feel a bit more comfortable with how IDrive works now...

Cheers - Tony

SteveA · 2022-01-09 11:39:58

Ultimately incremental backup is going to save you time, storage space (on your IDrive account) and data usage on your Internet connection. It will only transfer file blocks that have changed, and also give you the benefit of file versions (up to 10 per file not affecting your overall quota) so that you can do a point-in-time restore.

Incremental backup works at block level, so for example if a huge 40GB virtual disk file changed, it would work out what parts it need to transfer and only upload those to your IDrive account, not the whole 40GB again (unless the whole thing changed!).

tonyrees · 2022-01-09 17:39:48

Thanks, Steve for the response.

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#1 2022-01-08 03:17:52

Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

#2 2022-01-08 03:51:50

Re: Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

#3 2022-01-08 11:58:03

Re: Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

#4 2022-01-08 19:10:12

Re: Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

#5 2022-01-09 03:04:34

Re: Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

#6 2022-01-09 11:39:58

Re: Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

#7 2022-01-09 17:39:48

Re: Newbie IDrive question - moving files between sync and backup?

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