Backup software

[Stuart]

Can anyone recommend some backup software for Win XP Pro that works
reliably?

I installed Acronis Trueimage earlier this year and set it work doing
weekly backups.

I just had the need to restore and the only backups available were from
last April!

I used the latest one and things seemed OK till tonight. I went to create
some PDFs and Acrobat 6, which I've been using for some time, wasn't
there. There was no sign of it anywhere so I had to re-install.

I set away a new backup process a couple of days ago and when I checked
there seem to be warnings associated with them and yesterdays a "Red
Cross" error about not being able to find a configuration file.

I have no faith in this program, what else is available?

--
*Plain Text* email -- it's an accessibility issue
() no proprietary attachments; no html mail
/\ ascii ribbon campaign - <www.asciiribbon.org>

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

> Can anyone recommend some backup software for Win XP Pro that works
> reliably?

I've read that there's a versatile and reliable free backup utility:

http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm

which I thought I'd investigate in due course, since what I use now (on XP)
isn't supported on W8 as far as I know (or at least I'd need to buy a new
version).

At present I use Centered's SecondCopy. It's been reliable for years but
some of the options are tricky to find as they are buried on obscure menus,
and support isn't all that great - via email only and I found the author...
unhelpful.


I don't do image backups though, and since I started using Dropbox don't
usually backup most of what's in Dropbox since by definition all those files
are in several places already.

--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsre...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "aaa" by "284".

[Tony Moore]

On 18 Sep 2013, Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

> Can anyone recommend some backup software for Win XP Pro that works
> reliably?
>
> I installed Acronis Trueimage earlier this year and set it work doing
> weekly backups.

[snip]

> I have no faith in this program, what else is available?

I've used GFI Backup Home Edition 2009, at first with WinXP, then Vista
and now Win7. On the few occasions when I've needed to restore data, it
has been available. Simple and reliable, I would agree with this review
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/GFI-Backup-Home-Edition-2009-Review-112509.shtml

GFI seem to have moved on to other things, and the program is no longer
available at http://www.gfi.com , so download from the link above.

Tony

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

> At present I use Centered's SecondCopy. It's been reliable for years but
> some of the options are tricky to find as they are buried on obscure
> menus, and support isn't all that great - via email only and I found the
> author... unhelpful.

Two examples of unhelpful:

- if one chooses to zip up files, then the way the zipping software is
called means that empty source folders are omitted from the zipped backups.
That, I think, is something that can be controlled by passing different
'switches' on the command line to the zipper. It matters because if, say,
you backup an application which contains empty folders but the backup
doesn't, restoring the backup creates a different folder structure from the
original. That might affect how an arbitrary app works. The solution, in
the absence of Centered's author understanding this, is to make sure that
there are no empty folders in any file structure before you run a backup.
But that's non-trivial when you don't know what form of dummy file to put
into an arbitrary folder... Or alternatively, to store a listing showing
where the empty folders were alongside the backup.

- SC allows one to configure commands which will be run before a backup
starts. Great! It means one can implement the workaround for the problem
above... But in other situations one might, say, want to run some code that
decides if now is an appropriate time to run a particular backup - one might
want to shutdown some apps or ask the user if now's a good time... But SC
(at least the version I was using; maybe newer versions allow it) doesn't
test the return code from the pre-backup command so you can't stop the
backup that is meant to follow that from actually taking place.

[Stuart]

In article <mpro.mtceek...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk.invalid>,

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
wrote:

> I don't do image backups though,

My main requirement is for image back-ups of Drive C.

Having to re-install everything from scratch and then watch while stuff
fetches and loads all the updates, is a real PITA if things go badly
wrong, as in this case.

Data is not so much of an issue (separate physical drive) as it is
relatively easy to make backup copies of newly created work on alternative
media by simple copying. (Though I probably need to be more disciplined in
this respect.)

Thanks for the link.

[Stuart]

In article <mpro.mtch52...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk.invalid>,

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
wrote:

> - if one chooses to zip up files, then the way the zipping software is
> called means that empty source folders are omitted from the zipped
> backups. That, I think, is something that can be controlled by passing
> different 'switches' on the command line to the zipper. It matters
> because if, say, you backup an application which contains empty folders
> but the backup doesn't, restoring the backup creates a different folder
> structure from the original. That might affect how an arbitrary app
> works. The solution, in the absence of Centered's author understanding
> this, is to make sure that there are no empty folders in any file
> structure before you run a backup. But that's non-trivial when you don't
> know what form of dummy file to put into an arbitrary folder... Or
> alternatively, to store a listing showing where the empty folders were
> alongside the backup.

As Windows itself creates folders which I never use and are therefore
empty - "My documents etc" I'm not sure how much of an issue this might
be. I've no idea what applications themselves might do.

[Chris Hughes]

In message <538d4ff6...@argonet.co.uk>

Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

> Can anyone recommend some backup software for Win XP Pro that works
> reliably?

> I installed Acronis Trueimage earlier this year and set it work doing
> weekly backups.

> I just had the need to restore and the only backups available were from
> last April!

> I used the latest one and things seemed OK till tonight. I went to create
> some PDFs and Acrobat 6, which I've been using for some time, wasn't
> there. There was no sign of it anywhere so I had to re-install.

> I set away a new backup process a couple of days ago and when I checked
> there seem to be warnings associated with them and yesterdays a "Red
> Cross" error about not being able to find a configuration file.

> I have no faith in this program, what else is available?

I use this program on 4 PC's and it is totally reliable and does
extremely good restores.

How had you actually configured your backup regime?

The normal routine is it does a full backup of either the entire drive
or selected areas per your *choice* and then at whatever specified
intervals, it backs up the changes in the industry standard
Grandfather, father, son manner.



--
Chris Hughes

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

> Having to re-install everything from scratch and then watch while stuff
> fetches and loads all the updates, is a real PITA if things go badly
> wrong, as in this case.

Until recently I was using 3 PCs all with either XP Home or Pro on them
(one's got unreliable and I have a new W8 laptop as well that I've not yet
set-up). I got fed up installing software on each and, as I'm using Dropbox,
invested some extra time to find out which apps would run fine on all three
machines if only installed (from one machine) into some part of the Dropbox
file structure.

All the command-line interface applets clearly work ok on that basis. And
so do quite a large number of other apps. Those whose installs create a lot
of registry entries usually don't.

I've also started using many more instances of 'portable' apps - apps
designed for a wandering user to keep on a USB stick and use on any computer
without leaving too much (in some cases) or any (in others) trace of that
use on the machine involved. I install those apps into Dropbox too, and
although there's usually a short extra delay while they start, it means that
the apps' settings etc are kept in sync across multiple machines.

I hardly ever start any app from Start - Programs... or the Quick Launch
Area.

Since two machines have just one disk in them and one has four, things are
not all organised the same way on all machines. Originally each machine had
its own set of shortcuts... many of which were on each machine's desktop ...
but that's a pain to maintain, so I replaced them with a single set kept in
Dropbox. Also the desktop on my netbook is far smaller than that on my
multi-monitor desktop-machine and trying to keep a similar layout of
frequently-used shortcuts on all machines was proving tricky.

Many shortcuts had symbolic targets eg "%DROPBXRT%\%MACHINID%\something"
which worked in a way, but each time one was used on a particular system I
think Windows would store the current value of those symbols in the shortcut
file, and that value would be replicated across Dropbox. When the same
shortcut was used elsewhere the same would happen, and that occasionally
caused peculiar things. It also meant that a shortcut that made sense on 2
machines but not the third simply wouldn't work everywhere, giving rise to
Windows' annoying "searching for a shortcut's target" dialog. Also, often
shortcuts have icons which are stored in the executable that they point
at... and that meant if I updated an .exe file on one system shortcuts could
lose their icons.

So I wrote a bunch of scripts which take an argument like, literally,
"%DROPBXRT%\%MACHINID%\something". They evaluate it on the machine they're
running on and if the file/folder concerned doesn't exist just pop-up an
"oops" message - but don't waste time with the stupid search dialog. (They
also log what they were asked to do, so I don't even have to remember what
didn't work - I can check back later if I want to.) I replaced all the
original shortcuts to .exe's and folders with shortcuts to the scripts that
will invoke those .exe's or open folders.

Separately I extracted icons from .exe's and stored these individually in a
Dropbox folder that only contains lots of single-icon files. All those
icons are therefore available on all machines, whether the programs they
illustrate are installed there or not. I updated the shortcuts to the
scripts, to make them use these separate icons.

So my shortcuts all have sensible icons. None of them mysteriously lose
their icons even if I happen to be updating a particular app on one machine.
If a shortcut doesn't work I don't get the "searching" dialog. If I can't
remember what didn't work (and think it should have done) I can look at a
log file to find out which shortcuts have recently failed.

I'm using command windows to issue commands more and more. I think I'm
achieving two things - multiple machines that are, regardless of hardware &
OS, easier to maintain as a set, and also possibly easing an eventual
migration to some flavour of linux.

[Tony Moore]

On 19 Sep 2013, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
<jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

[snip]

> ... I got fed up installing software on each and, as I'm using

> Dropbox, invested some extra time to find out which apps would run
> fine on all three machines if only installed (from one machine) into
> some part of the Dropbox file structure.

If you lose connectivity, presumably the whole system comes to grief?

Tony

[Stuart]

In article <mpro.mte44s...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk.invalid>,

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>

wrote:

> > Having to re-install everything from scratch and then watch while stuff
> > fetches and loads all the updates, is a real PITA if things go badly
> > wrong, as in this case.

> Until recently I was using 3 PCs all with either XP Home or Pro on them
> (one's got unreliable and I have a new W8 laptop as well that I've not
> yet set-up). I got fed up installing software on each and, as I'm using
> Dropbox, invested some extra time to find out which apps would run fine
> on all three machines if only installed (from one machine) into some
> part of the Dropbox file structure.

<SNIP>

Sorry, that's all far too complex for an ignoramus like me.

The applications I principally use are Firefox, the software that came
with my digital camera, Irfanview and Virtual Acorn (Not in any particular
order)

I'll answer Chris Hughes' question next time I get up the loft to the
machine. Much is happening over the weekend with various daughters coming
and staying with us and a birthday meal out tomorrow night.

[Stuart]

In article <538dd552...@argonet.co.uk>,

Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

> The applications I principally use are Firefox, the software that came
> with my digital camera, Irfanview and Virtual Acorn (Not in any
> particular order)

Missed off Acrobat 6 which I use for turning scans of magazines and other
literature into .PDFs

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

>Sorry, that's all far too complex for an ignoramus like me.

Well, the 'portable' apps thing could be viewed as making Windows apps a bit
like RISC OS ones; they can be installed anywhere(ish) and are
self-contained.

The copy of IrfanView I use is one of them, these days. So I don't
separately install it on each machine, but instead install the portable
version once - and it goes into a normal folder (in my case in Dropbox, so
it's visible on each machine), not in C:\Program Files. A shortcut to the
portable version starts it.

There are two flavours of portable app - many apps are independently made in
portable forms by their own authors, but none of those work in exactly the
same way. There's also a project called "PortableApps" where many apps are
packaged up in a standard way to work in a portable fashion. If one
installs the PA 'manager' then one can run it and have it offer you the
chance of running of the installed apps that it manages. (This makes more
sense if you install them all on a USB stick; if you had done that and
inserted your USB stick into someone else's computer you could then run your
copy of the PA manager and thence any of the apps from your USB stick,
regardless of what the owner of the computer had installed on their machine.
This is attractive to, say, students who may have to use a variety of
machines each day and this way can have their own favourite apps with them;
it's also often used by technical support staff so they have their favourite
utilities available on users' computers.)

I mainly run my PA apps directly (because, with them not being in my case on
a USB stick, I can do that - they're always in the same place on my
machine's disks), but every so often I do start the PA manager - and it will
then tell me about updates to the PA apps I use - eg if a new version if
IrfanView is available - and if I choose, will download and install that.
So I then get a new version installed in one operation, with no thinking
required, on all machines (because of the folder being in Dropbox).

>The applications I principally use are Firefox, the software that came
>with my digital camera, Irfanview and Virtual Acorn (Not in any particular
>order)

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

No.

Probably too much info coming...

The Dropbox folder exists on each of my machines as well as the Dropbox
servers in the US. If I put a program in the DB folder then each machine
will have a copy of that file, but I don't have to copy it around all the
machines manually, it happens automatically.

If any/all machines are not connected to the internet the files still exist
on each machine. When each machine is next connected to the internet the DB
client software on each one works out what has changed on that machine since
it last talked to the DB servers and uploads change details (not the whole
files, just the bits that are different). It also downloads details of
changes that have happened on other machines I have so, after a while, all
the machines come back into sync.


For example, a while ago I installed FileZilla (an FTP client). I ran the
install on just one of my machines, but put the app into

C:\My Dropbox\Programs--ALL-\~open-source filezilla V3-7-3\

and subsequently set up a shortcut etc (also in a Dropbox folder so I only
had to do that once) to the FileZilla .exe.

[Not every app will work out of a 'shared' folder like that. I also have
some programs installed into machine-specific folders, eg:

C:\My Dropbox\Programs-<machine>\...

and you should realise that I therefore have 3 copies of eg the "SN130"
machine's folder, on the three machines. But because of the way that
shortcuts etc are setup, only machine X will ever use the contents of
machine-X's folder. You might think this is daft, but it means that I have
safety copies of SN130-specific folders on my other machines, as well as the
DB servers and when SN130 changes something in that folder, the changes are
synced to the server & other machines too.]




Filezilla has an fzdefaults.xml file which one can choose to place inside
its main app folder, and in that one can specify amongst other things:

<Setting name="Config Location">
$JN_DROPBXRT\Programs--ALL-\~open-source filezilla V3-7-3\config\
</Setting>

On each of my machines the environment variable JN_DROPBXRT contains the
machine-specific location of the dropbox folder. It is in fact at

C:\My Dropbox

on all of them, but needn't be. Anyway this part of the XML file tells
filezilla to read its config from the specified place - the \config
directory inside the app itself.


The Dropbox software syncs the whole thing so I end up with three copies of
the folder:

C:\My Dropbox\Programs--ALL-\~open-source filezilla V3-7-3\

on my three machines, all with the exact same contents. I installed it once
but all three machines have their own copy. If the install "in Dropbox" had
only put the app onto Dropbox's servers - then I would have a problem
because I'd only be able to run the app if I was online but that's not how
it works.

This way, I have a separate copy of the app on each machine. If I run
FileZilla on one machine that's offline (then I achieve nothing because FTP
is useless without a network connection) but suppose I start it anyway and
change some setting or other... Then the config files on that machine's
copy of FileZilla get changed. The previously identical copies on the other
two machines stay as they were until the changes made on this machine gets
copied to the others.

The other machines' copies of FileZilla will still work - they don't need to
know that one machine's FileZilla has got newer settings, yet. Eventually
(when all machines which have files different from their original values
have been online and compared notes with the Dropbox servers) the Dropbox
software will realise there are incompatible versions of the config files.
It either copies the newest set of configs to the other machines, bringing
them all uptodate, or (if those on the other machines have also changed
since the time when all n copies were last in sync) it places separate
copies of all versions on all machines. You have to notice this has
happened and decide for yourself which is the right file, but you can do
that from any machine because all of them have copies of all versions of the
file in question.


A drawback of DB is that their software doesn't alert you that conflicts
have happened (at least it didn't use to do so - I have a feeling there's a
way to get an RSS feed or something that might tell me. One certainly needs
to be aware of the risk and to manage it.

Duplicate copies of supposedly identical files are given names that show
that such and such a file is in conflict with another such. Every couple of
weeks I do a file search looking for such things - in my case I've found it
happens rarely, but I have been very careful how I've organised my files.

I also have some other strategies that look for instances of such files in
conflict with each other in places where I know through experience that
they're likely to happen - that's to say mainly in day-to-day notes files,
to-do lists etc. Typically it happens if I update a todo list on one
offline machine, then make a different change to the same todo list on
another offline machine. When those machines next send those changes to the
Dropbox server the server can't tell which change was "right". It does not
assume that the changes date-stamped earliest are the "right" ones, thank
goodness. It does save the original file (in its archives on the server)
and both copies of the two separate newer files. In essence one will retain
the original file name and the other will be renamed something like

<originalfilename>(XXXXX's conflicted copy <date> <time>).ext

where "XXXXX" is the name of the machine that created that copy of the file.


How do I detect these conflicts? Well it mainly happens to plain text files
that I manually edit... The text editor I use is programmable, and in
particular runs a program to set itself up every time I start to edit a new
file. I've put into that program a tiny bit of code that checks whether any
files with *conflicted* in their names exist in the same folder as any file
I happen to be about to edit. There's no perceptible delay in the startup of
an edit session (I timed it).

I have found the drawbacks are minor, and the advantages are great.

There are apps whose data I wouldn't put into DB, for example my news & mail
client. But that's really because it does an awful lot of file operations on
about 6500 separate files in hundreds of folders. I don't need nor want to
be able to run it on multiple machines at the same time, nor would it really
be safe to do so - it's not designed to support that. Instead I run it on
my main day-to-day machine. I keep daily zipped backups of the live app on
the day-to-day machine, and once every few days I make an unzipped copy of
the whole app into Dropbox. Because DB only uploads changes it doesn't have
to upload the whole size of those 6500 files when I do that, because a lot
of the data in the app hasn't changed. But DB does go a bit frantic while
it is checking what has changed and deciding what to upload. If I need to
run the mail & news client on a different machine I install the app there
and give it a copy of the most recent DB copy of the 6500 files.

[Tony Moore]

On 20 Sep 2013, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts

<jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
> Tony Moore <old_c...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > On 19 Sep 2013, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
> > <jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > ... I got fed up installing software on each and, as I'm using
> > > Dropbox, invested some extra time to find out which apps would run
> > > fine on all three machines if only installed (from one machine)
> > > into some part of the Dropbox file structure.
> >
> > If you lose connectivity, presumably the whole system comes to
> > grief?
>
> No.
>
> Probably too much info coming...
>
> The Dropbox folder exists on each of my machines as well as the
> Dropbox servers in the US. If I put a program in the DB folder then
> each machine will have a copy of that file, but I don't have to copy
> it around all the machines manually, it happens automatically.
>
> If any/all machines are not connected to the internet the files still
> exist on each machine.

Of course - sorry for the mental lapse here!

[snip interesting account of dropbox arrangements]

My main use for Dropbox is to park files, which would otherwise have
been attached to emails. MPro/Yahoo corrupt all attachments, so its more
reliable, and simpler, to send a link to the file, in the Dropbox Public
folder.

Tony

[Russell Hafter News]

In article
<mpro.mte44s...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk.invalid>,

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
<jn.nntp....@wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:

> Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

> > Having to re-install everything from scratch and then
> > watch while stuff fetches and loads all the updates, is
> > a real PITA if things go badly wrong, as in this case.

> Until recently I was using 3 PCs all with either XP Home
> or Pro on them (one's got unreliable and I have a new W8
> laptop as well that I've not yet set-up). I got fed up
> installing software on each and, as I'm using Dropbox,
> invested some extra time to find out which apps would run
> fine on all three machines if only installed (from one
> machine) into some part of the Dropbox file structure.

> All the command-line interface applets clearly work ok on
> that basis. And so do quite a large number of other
> apps. Those whose installs create a lot of registry
> entries usually don't.

Following an earlier posting of Jeremy's about this I have
tried it as well. One of my essential apps is Deutsche
Bahn's off-line timetable which I like to have on my Netbook
when I am out and about, as well as on the PC in front of
me. It is, IMHO, an excellent piece of software. The
downside is that the data is frequently updated.

The update files take quite a long time to download, though
the actual update process is fairly quick.

I used to have the program installed on the PC in front of
me, the backup / reserve PC upstairs and the netbook. making
sure that all three were regularly updated was a PITA.

So, when the 2013 version of the program came out, I
installed it into the 'My Dropbox' folder instead of into
'Program Files'. Now the other machines get updated
automatically (if slowly) each time they are switched on.

The only niggle I have found is that the updating process
can only happen from the main PC in front of me. If I try to
update from the netbook I get an error message telling me
that I can only update from the origianl install, not a
backup.

> I've also started using many more instances of 'portable'
> apps - apps designed for a wandering user to keep on a
> USB stick and use on any computer without leaving too
> much (in some cases) or any (in others) trace of that use
> on the machine involved.

I did experiment with that for Firefox for a while, using a
USB stick, but having got the net book this has rather fllen
into disuse here.

> I install those apps into Dropbox too, and although
> there's usually a short extra delay while they start, it
> means that the apps' settings etc are kept in sync across
> multiple machines.

AIUI, you are installing Portable Apps versions of, say,
Firefox into Dropbox, rather than onto a USB stick? Is there
an advantage to this as comapred to the standard versions?

--
Russell
http://www.russell-hafter-holidays.co.uk
Russell Hafter Holidays E-mail to enquiries at our domain
Need a hotel? <http://www.hrs.com/?client=en__blue&customerId=416873103>

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

I don't do it with Firefox as that seems to handle its own updates pretty
well, automatically, so it's not a maintenance problem. And it's one of the
few apps that I consciously try not to update on all machines at once, just
in case there's a problem. I also keep an eye on the mozilla firefox
support mail list.


The PA apps I have at present are a mix of things I use almost every day:

7-ZipPortable - for handling zip & other archives
IrfanViewPortable - image manipulation
JuicePortable - fetches podcasts
LibreOfficePortable - instead of Word etc
Mp3tagPortable - for scripted & GUI-based mp3 retagging
VLCPortable - for watching videos

and a longer list I installed to play with but haven't made any decisions
about yet - for example variants on 'cmd.exe' that provide tabbed windows
and better mouse usage.

The principal advantages are:
- install each app once and have it almost immediately ready for
use on 3 machines. It's true that when I installed something
manually on one machine the process of doing the same on the
other machines was not usually too difficult, but it still
had to be done.

- never have to manually uninstall some app, tidy up, then
install an upgrade. The PA framework app (when I run it,
which isn't very often) will tell me when a new version of
it or one of the subsidiary apps I've got installed, is
available and download & install it (to one machine but
thus three) without me having to do anything except leave
it to get on with it. One can also use the framework app
to find and install-for-the-first-time other PA apps, though
I usually search etc on the PA website.

Because the apps are all wrapped up in the utilities that
make portableness work, the built-in install/update mechanism
is needed to make sure that the old app is removed and the
new version installed in the right way in that framework;
it'd be a nightmare to do that by hand.

Some apps, eg IrfanView & 7-Zip, once installed in the
framework can be run directly from their framework versions
without using the framework utilities to start & stop them;
basically these apps are designed with simple structures.

The way that portableness works is quite complicated, because
not only does it have to temporarily make an app work on a
machine that didn't previously have it in use, it also has
to protect any full/normal instance of the same app that the
real machine might already have installed (if the PA user was
plugging their USB stick into someone else's machine). Apps
don't get made into 'proper' accredited PA apps until their
installer mechanism has been checked by the PA people and
thoroughly tested - though in fact the portable mp3tag app
has been a beta for ages (that's to say the wrapper config is
a beta but the contained mp3tag app itself gets updated within
that). I did look at the documentation of how it's all done
and it's really ... thorough. There are many issues that the
framework has to take into account.


I think you could get into a mess using a PA app stored in Dropbox if you
start the app simultaneously on multiple computers (*). If that's likely to
happen then really you'd be safer using PA apps on USB sticks, or wasting
disk space and keeping n separate copies of the PA framework in Dropbox, one
set for each machine. But then it's unlikely you could easily share app
configs between machines - it would need individual PA apps to have ways to
override the location of their config files, and one to be able to make that
fit one's way of working.

* because: when you start a PA app on one machine it saves a whole lot of
info about the state the machine was in before you start that app, in files
in the PA framework (in theory the user's USB stick). But for me, that info
is in DB and gets synced elsewhere. Then if you start the PA app on another
machine its initial state info gets saved, into the framework... but that's
the same files that just got updated by DB syncing the first lot of
changes... So they now contain info about the initial state of the second
machine; when the first machine shuts its app the info it will restore came
from the wrong machine.

This doesn't matter if the app concerned is essentially a simple one, eg
VLC, where config info stored & restored is basically the same on all my
machines, so it doesn't matter if the same content file is being synced. But
it could matter for an app that stored user or control data in its own
files.


When for example I run Juice (to collect podcasts) it has its own databases
with details of podcasts I've downloaded, subscriptions etc. The databases
get synced via DB. This is fine; it's very rare for me to run Juice on
anything except my normal day-to-day machine, and useful that - once in a
blue moon - I can run it elsewhere. I'd never run it on multiple machines
at the same time, but it's great being able to run it on any single machine
one at a time.


If you compare that to the normal version of Juice, to achieve the same
thing I'd need to install Juice from scratch in 3 places. I'd need to
configure the three copies the same way and override all three to use a
shared database (which could be in DB). If it wasn't immediately obvious
how to do so, I'd have to poke around finding out how to put the databases
and/or configs in a shared location. If that wasn't possible I'd have to
decide whether I wanted to keep my own central shared copy and move it back
and forth between the place Juice needed it to be on each machine and where
I needed it to be...

[Stuart]

In article <194a9a8d53.chris@mytarbis>,

Chris Hughes <ne...@noonehere.co.uk> wrote:
> The normal routine is it does a full backup of either the entire drive
> or selected areas per your *choice* and then at whatever specified
> intervals, it backs up the changes in the industry standard
> Grandfather, father, son manner.

The original backup was the default "incremental", entire "C" drive.

I have dug a little deeper into the program and it is now set as Custom -
full, daily but with auto clean up set to to "no more than 3 recent
versions.