Off site back up, Drop Box?

Not used it for a few years, but you used to specify which folders on your computer backed up or synced with Dropbox.

Not sure how it works with NAS storage, probably depends on your brand of NAS.

Also not used the mobile app for years so that's probably updated but never found any issues with it.

I've been using DropBox for many years, it's very simple to use. It creates a folder on your computer called "Dropbox". Anything in that folder gets backed up unless, but you can manually set specific folders to not backup. On Windows, you can move your "My Documents" folder into the Dropbox folder and all your stuff will be backed up, as long as you make sure you save it somewhere within My Documents, not just in whatever random location your apps choose.

It's very easy to restore stuff or move it to a new computer. You just install Dropbox again, choose which folders to sync, and it will download everything. The only thing you need to be very careful about is that, if you work on something on different computers (at home and in the office, for example), you must close the file on one machine before opening it on another. If you don't do that, you will end up with conflicted copies.

It depends on what kind of risks you are trying to mitigate, I’ll admit I haven’t looked at Dropbox for a while but last time I did it was very much like onedrive & google drive which are file sync mechanisms with versioning & cloud storage.

This means they work very well with keeping a copy of your data of site & in sync on multiple systems if you wish & accidental deletion/file corruption is also easy to recover from with the versioning aspect.

Where they are less able is the maleware/ransomware attacks, this is where a device becomes compromised & then your data is infected & subsequently encrypted effectively locking you out of your data, at this point you’d say great I’ll restore from my backup & that works well until you are locked out again because the files you restored were already infected just not encrypted, so you restore again but not from the live ‘backup’ but a earlier version & find the same thing happening again.

This is because now days the creators of said maleware/ransomware are aware of online backups with versioning & infect the data then make numerous small changes to files so that they ‘use up’ the versions of a file meaning whatever version you restore it’s already compromised.

In a ideal world you’d mix something like Dropbox/onedrive/google drive with something like backblaze / arcronis or another true backup product.

Set up monthly or weekly these give real point in time restore points rather than simple versioning.

This might explain more.

If it's just for photos would something native to your OS/phone choice not be better? We use Apple so all phones/ipads/laptops sync to iCloud with a family plan, means we can backup and share photos, files, etc. I expect Google Photos is similar/same.

You do have to be careful in that if I delete a photo from my phone it asks if I want to delete it from everywhere (I generally do)

I use Idrive, it's better value than Dropbox for bulk storage of backed up files.

It does both back up and Cloud Drive, but I only use it for backup.

The only downsides I've found is the Web portal is a bit slow and clunky for individual file access, and you can't select multiple files for download easily, you have to "Restore" files - but you can control where to, they don't have to go back where they came from.

Idrive pricing

Cheers folks, all really helpful. I'll have a play tomorrow

£95 a year would get you a family office 365 subscription which provides 1Tb per person along with a full version of office for pretty much every device you may have.

I did used to have Dropbox, but since Facebook bought them it turned into a “you’re the product” application.

Family M365 Inc 6 x 1TB OneDrive is usually a lot less - £40-50 annually from Argos and another popular online shop.

If you know someone who works at Microsoft and can get added to their friends and family then you can get a family O365 subscription for about £17 per year!

I use office 365 at work loads. But I shut my personal account as having to 2 accounts created lots of problems

But what I’ve learnt is that what I want is back up not syncing

Thanks again

If you know someone who works at Microsoft

does Bill Gates count?

I know him. Don’t think he knows me though (unless getting my covid vaccine counts)

I use office 365 at work loads. But I shut my personal account as having to 2 accounts created lots of problems

But what I’ve learnt is that what I want is back up not syncing

Thanks again

As per my earlier post in a ideal world it would be both, sync based for those ‘oh cock’ moments where you delete a file or folder.

Weekly/monthly backups for disaster recovery, these need not be off site but it’s nice, the video I posted talks about using Blu-ray media which is quite a neat solution if you are disciplined to do manually, if not some backup sw will have this functionality built in.

Edit:
I forgot to say you don’t really have backups until you have tested them by successfully restoring some files this should be done reasonably regularly for a couple of reasons, you want to be sure your backups are working as expected prior to needing them, secondly if you do need them that stressful enough without learning how to perform a restore at the same time.

Dropbox, OneDrive etc are not backup solutions. They’re cloud file storage solutions. If you delete a file from your computer it’s getting deleted from the cloud storage. They very much have their purpose and place but backup isn’t it.

I use Backblaze as cloud backup. This is a true full and/or incremental off-site backup solution. It can either restore over the net or via a physical drive being mailed.

I use iCloud Files and OneDrive only for when I want to keep in sync files across multiple devices.

Dropbox, OneDrive etc are not backup solutions.

This is partly true; they can be used for storage of the backup so may be part of the solution.

OneDrive has 30 days of version history / recycle bin if you do have an oops and catch it in time. I think Dropbox has similar. The Microsoft one definitely better value particularly for multiple family users and if you need Office.

A good extra layer is to get a couple of external drives - then either use some software, a script or manually make copies over to the drive. Store that somewhere offsite - family/friend's house, safe deposit box if you have one, desk drawer at work. Plug the other one in and keep backing up to that. Switch them as often as you think you need. If 2TB covers it then two portable drives will be under £100.

Dropbox, OneDrive etc are not backup solutions. They’re cloud file storage solutions. If you delete a file from your computer it’s getting deleted from the cloud storage.

With Dropbox, the file is still available for 30 days after deletion, from which you can recover it and if you pay for the pro level, you have a year to recover it.

It also keeps every version of every file, so if you over write something by accident, you can still recover the previous file.

as above, I would consider anything like dropbox/one drive etc a bit of a bodge for actual backups. I've used Backblaze for years, totally set & forget, you have to pay per computer (although you get unlimited space for each one) so may work out more expensive.