Backup à trois
May 29, 2009 3:48 AM   Subscribe

I need to have triple backups of my PCs - Mac OS X, Windows Vista and an external hard drive. The same stuff, 3 times across. With version control. How?

My setup is currently like this: I have Windows Vista (well, Windows 7 actually, but for practical purposes, could be Vista or XP), and this is a desktop computer connect to an external hard drive. I have a MacBook with Mac OS X.

I want to use the desktop as a server, so that items on the laptop also exist on the server hard drive and can be used there also. I need to do this in a way that when there is a conflict, data does not disappear, but I am notified of it. So I'm thinking version control.

Furthermore, I need it that the desktop automatically backs everything up to an external hard drive. The hard drive is not synced, it's just an emergency backup in case something goes wrong with both PCs.

We're talking about 120GB of data here, including music, videos etc. What would be the best way of doing this?
posted by markovich to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You say you want version control, but do you actually want to keep a copy of all past files, even ones you've deleted on purpose? Or is it just the notification of sync conflicts that you're interested in?
posted by chrismear at 4:19 AM on May 29, 2009


Also, do you want a full copy of the 120 GB library to be on the laptop at all times, or just a select portion of it at any one time?
posted by chrismear at 4:21 AM on May 29, 2009


Response by poster: I actually just want sync conflicts, and perhaps back copies of particular text files, but I don't need version control on movies or MP3s. The full 120gb library should be on my laptop at all times.
posted by markovich at 4:55 AM on May 29, 2009


DirSync Pro is an open source GUI app that does bidirectional synchronisation between folders, including conflict resolution. I don't think it handles the networking aspect itself, so you would need to share one folder and mount it on the other computer manually, and then sync the two 'local' folders.

If you'd prefer a more customisable automatable command-line based option, Unison has similar features, and also has built in networking over sockets or a secure tunnel. It does have a basic GUI on at least Windows, but the command line is the real interface.

As for the external hard drive back-up, I'd probably use a separate piece of software to just do a regular dumb clone of the files onto that drive, so that it's a straightforward reliable back-up.
posted by chrismear at 6:38 AM on May 29, 2009


Synkron works for Windows\Mac\Linux and it really good.

Dropbox is one of the best syncing utilities out there. It works instantly.

You might want to do a combination. Synkron for large media type files and then files you'll be changing a lot like docs, etc, use dropbox for.
posted by zephyr_words at 8:58 AM on May 29, 2009


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