Cloud backup

Heedtheadvice

Help please from anyone who can advise a MSE budget friendly method to backup to Onedrive from Win PC (10/11)

I use Google drive (nearly full!) to store some files and I also have One drive with 100GB virtually unused. I wish to use that available space to backup files not under the Microsoft default Doc/photo/video etc folders i.e from a 'generic data area' on my D or  similar drives.

One drive does not seem to have that functionality, neither does Macrium Reflect8 that I use but other software can do this. I have seen Goodsync mentioned.

Is Goodsync any good? Can anyone recommend other software or ways to achieve my aim? Plus as I also want to do this  for an elderly pensioner, free is attractive! Personal use only

TMSG

I use a command-line app called rclone (see rclone.org) which supports a huge number of cloud services. It's free and very powerful but not the easiest thing to get to grips with. There are GUI front ends for it but there is still a certain learning curve. OTOH once mastered it can be used to service almost all cloud services in the same way. And command line means of course that everything can be automated very easily

Heedtheadvice

Thanks will have a look

debitcardmayhem

This https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/back-up-your-folders-with-onedrive-d61a7930-a6fb-4b95-b28a-6552e77c3057#ID0EDBH=Windows

Heedtheadvice

@Debit, quite for 'standard' folders set up by uSoft ( or to a locationthat a user has redirected to - the same set of folders,) ....

but not for other folders that a user has created as an example only

" d:\a_folder_of_bank_transactions"

flaneurs_lobster

Heedtheadvice said:

@Debit, quite for 'standard' folders set up by uSoft ( or to a locationthat a user has redirected to - the same set of folders,) ....

but not for other folders that a user has created as an example only

" d:\a_folder_of_bank_transactions"

...nor the Downloads 'standard' folder, which I'd really like to be backed-up with the others. 

flaneurs_lobster

IvanOpinion said:

Depending on how your disk drive is formatted you may be able to set up a symbolic link that allows you to map Onedrive to where your data is, then it all happens automatically.

I tried doing something like this (at least I think this is what I did) earlier this year by "moving" the Downloads folder to a folder being synchronised with Google Drive.

It went horribly wrong, classic "deadly embrace" with GDrive & OneDrive trying to back up each other via my hard drive, bringing laptop and house internet to grinding halt. 

A little knowledge......

Heedtheadvice

...a not so distributed denial of service  😱 ?

TMSG

flaneurs_lobster said:

It went horribly wrong, classic "deadly embrace" with GDrive & OneDrive trying to back up each other via my hard drive, bringing laptop and house internet to grinding halt.

That's one reason why I'm weary of stuff that does things "automagically" in the background. I'd rather invest a little more time (and yes, sometimes lose some convenience as well) by automating things my way... but have them under my control.

Heedtheadvice

I'm still looking into rclone but watching responses on here.

Can you explain what symbolic links are and how they are used to backup to clouds?

Heedtheadvice

Thanks IvanOpinion for that clear and helpful post.

I will look into that as well as rclone.

Must admit I was quite keen  on rclone intil my security checker through it out as potentially malicious. The reason being it is often used by hackers as on of the tools in a ransomware attack...but not in itself malicious if downloaded from rclone.org.