Hi @DrBob,
I do apologize for the delay. The statement I made here still applies and is the best answer I have:
Also, as stated above, if you currently have no backup at all, I recommend looking at alternatives, at least until ours is available.
BACKUPS TO CLOUD SERVICES like Amazon Drive is not a simple task, particularly if you want to backup to a specific folder.
SYNCOVERY: Syncovery on Mac and PC can backup to Amazon Drive. But it has a painful and clunky user interface. And the backups are slow.
ChronoSync, my favorite Mac backup app, has still not linked up to Cloud Services after years of asking.
ARQ BACKUP: Currently, I use Arq to backup to Amazon Drive. It does a great and very efficient job. But it is for backing up whole drives, not to specific directories on Amazon Drive. I like it since it will encrypt the backup before sending it to Amazon. The primary problem is that restoring the files is a very slow process. This is why I also simultaneously backup using CRASHPLAN. If I need to retrieve a single file, CRASHPLAN allows one to do so quickly.
ODRIVE BACKUP: So I am willing to wait for oDrive’s solution to backup. It will make it much more useful a service.
SYNC LIMITATION ON LARGE DISKS: One limitation of oDrive Sync I did not realize is that Synchronization of files is a huge task - particularly if you are synchronizing large drives. So thanks to Tony of the oDrive Team for pointing this out.
oDrive can saturate your CPU and Bandwidth if allowed to run freely on a large drive. So I have to compromise and reduce its CPU and Bandwidth use to keep it from taking over my computer. I have to turn off oDrive when using Video Conferencing apps like Skype for Business since oDrive will hog the CPU and Bandwidth and degrade the experience. Luckily, oDrive allows you to limit the amount of bandwidth and CPU use to allow you to use your computer.
DropBox does synchronization very efficiently - much more efficiently than oDrive. So I disengaged oDrive from DropBox to minimize CPU and Bandwidth use.
AMAZON DRIVE, GOOGLE DRIVE, MICROSOFT ONEDRIVE FOR BUSINESS: I use oDrive primarily for synchronization to Amazon Drive, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive since their apps do not do synchronization very well at all. For this purpose, oDrive does spectacularly well.
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A tip for those waiting for the backup feature, have a look at this while waiting is duplicati
It does not look like Duplicati supports Amazon Cloud Drive, unless you opt for the Beta 2.0 version, which at least is showing development progress. Anyone having any luck with it to ACD?
OTOH, Arq5 backups to ACD can be a bit fidgety in my experience.
BTW, ACD has just quietly eliminated it’s Unlimited Plan for new users unless you are also on Amazon Prime or are a current user and have auto renewal of ACD.
My early interpretation of Amazon’s policy change for Unlimited storage was obviously flawed. Unlimited goes away for everyone when their current subscription expires. More details are available online and in this forum.
Everyone that relied on odrive for their backup woke up this morning with all of their business data in the recycle bin. One-way sync, which is what many of us have wanted, would have prevented this disaster. I can’t afford to let this happen to me again. Is there a solution with Odrive or do I need to look elsewhere?
Hi @scott.schneider,
I know that Amazon Drive’s failure yesterday really messed things up for folks when odrive synced based on the information Amazon Drive was returning at the time (no files/folders in the drive). We feel terrible about it.
Unfortunately there isn’t currently way to prevent this in odrive. I wrote a small post about it here, which goes into it a little more.
As for odrive as a backup solution, you can read my thoughts about this on this previous post in this thread:
The bottom line is that you can’t use current odrive for traditional backup (one-way sync) because it is a two-way, near real-time sync product.
Hey folks! It took a while, but yesterday we released a new backup feature (currently in beta) that provides a simple method for backing up a local folder to any remote locations (even to multiple locations!).
For more information about this feature, take a look at our documentation here:
Hi Tony,
Since I’m sure many have already used the sync option as a backup method, is there a way to transform a synced folder into a backup instead of uploading everything from the beginning ?
Avi
Hi @leiboavi,
This is not currently possible, but we understand the usefulness of an enhancement like this and will be considering it for the future.
Hi Tony,
It is not clear what will happen if I configure a folder to be backed up and after a while it gets disconnected. Can it be reconnected to be backed up again without needing to reupload everything?
Avi
Hey @leiboavi,
I actually started digging into this more today because I think it is important to be able to support this use case (I’m calling it “merge mode”). We may have something to test next week if you are willing to try it out.
Hi tony,
Thank you for checking this so quickly ,
Sure, when you have it ready I am willing to test it!
Avi
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Hi @leiboavi,
We released a new version that has the ability to enable merging as an advanced configuration:
One thing to keep in mind for this release is that it is not excluding placeholder files (an oversight that will be included in the next release). So if you end up wanting to convert a “Sync to odrive” folder to a “Backup to odrive” folder, you’ll want to make sure all of the files are downloaded locally (no placeholders), or remove the placeholders if you don’t want them uploaded to your backup.
We’ve released a new version that improves the merging process and well as logging and a few other things.
Hi Tony,
I tried the new backup option for few weeks , since it got released, and I really like it.
one thing that I noticed (including in the latest release) is that when I try to backup a folder that exists in my local iCloud Drive directory then the backup is just stuck and nothing happens.
Is there a way to make some sort of graphic extension (finder ext) for the backup feature also? maybe different colours?
and one last proposal - i think that a backup configuration that changes versioning is needed (how many versions to keep, disabling versioning…)
thanks
avi
Hi @leiboavi,
For the extension request, do you mean adding a check-mark to the file, similar to what we do with sync?
Versioning is something we would like to address, as well, although we don’t have it on the immediate road map right now.
For the issue with iCloud, I am going to follow-up in the other thread.
exactly check-mark to each file - maybe different colour than sync