backing up .fcw files

HelenAA

Hi,

I'm trying to find a free backup service that will handle (read 'backup') .fcw files. Any ideas? My track record with PCs isn't marvellous and I'm only using a PC laptop for CC and I'm looking around and it looks like its remembering to Dropbox or burn CDs.

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Helen

kylania

Any service should work I imagine, Dropbox or Google Drive or whichever you normally use. I would caution against actually using the files from within the synch folders of those services though. Like work with them in the usually folder and to back them up copy them to your synch folder and only pull out of there should you run into a problem. Working with live files in synch folders often leads to tears.

HelenAA

Mozy, an online backup service, ignores anything but standard files such as .doc, .png, .jpg etc which is why I asked on here. I'd not beworking on sync-ed files -- been there, done that, etc!

CharlesWayneRobinson

I just use a external hard drive to back up my files.

kylania

Looks like Mozy can handle Zip files, so you could just rclick your Maps Save Folder (the folder where your maps are kept) then Send to... Compressed (zipped) Folder. That will create a file called folder.zip (whatever the folder name was) which you could them move to your Mozy backup area.

Reading this documentation it seems that Mozy would automatically back up a zip file if it's on your desktop or documents, but doesn't sound like Mozy is a file storage solution like Google Drive can or Dropbox could be. It's more of a file synch service for selected files as you said.

Personally I use Google Drive for this kind of stuff.

HelenAA

Thanks for your comments - I appreciate them. Hadn't thought of zipping things but that will still mean me remembering to do it. Ideally I'd like something that doesn't rely on my memory.

JimP

I have a set of folders that are the same as my web sites. This under one set of folders, and another under CC3 and CC3+. I also use an external USB hard drive.

Having lost file over the years, I have backups of my backups.

pngs and jpgs don't compress well, so I don't zip them.

Monsen

Personally, I have a more complicated backup setup than most people would wish upon their worst enemy, but I do put a lot of my backups on Microsoft OneDrive as well. I have 10TB of space there because of my Office 365 subscription, but you do get a reasonable number of GB's completely free, and it supports all file types. The client should work on most other OSes as well (Android, Mac, iOS, ...). I think it works quite well.

Barliman

I use a external hard drive and Siber Systems' GoodSync for full backups, and then Dropbox for files I want accessible from anywhere and safe off-site.

thehawk

A little old school here - command shell scripts using robocopy and the WinZip command line add-in, then FTP files to the hosted web server.

Vintyri

The only thing better than an external USB hard drive for backing up RPG work is two external USB hard drives. Internet backups are OK, but if your ISP is down or your backup service is down, both of which happen from time to time, you lose access to your backups.

All three members of our Vintyri (TM) Project have most of the files for all of our products, but the main backup area for our work is here in my office. My main working computer has two SSD drives and a hard disk. Our publishing work is backed up on the internal hard disk, on three external USB hard disks and also on the hard drive of a second computer in the network. In other words, after we work on a book, make a map, etc., there are the original files on one of my SSD drives and five backup copies on five different hard drives.

In addition, the external drives are completely out of operation when we aren't using them for backup or restore operations. If we ever were to lose all of our work archives, we quite seriously would close up shop. We wouldn't even begin to try and redo more than 20 years of project work.

Monsen

I think we are getting into way more complicated systems than HelenAA asked for here, but I agree that a local backup is a very good thing. I keep multiple myself, but local and online. Another tip is to keep versioned backups. If you find that your main file is corrupt, multiple backups doesn't help you much if you have copied your corrupt file to all of them, overwriting the older good file. Either consider a backup system/service that does versioning for you, or copy your files to new (dated) folders for each backup. The latter is easy if you manually copy the files instead of using an automatic sync feature of an online service.