Looking into a way to Backup and restore remotely

[Leon Besson]

Yo! bromigos!

I’m currently playing around with ways to remote backup and restore Amiga OSes and files via network.

I’ve already tried Samba and know how slowwwwww! That is

I’m contemplating FTP. But am I right that this won’t keep “protection bits” on Amiga System files?

At the moment I have a Synology Diskstation 912+ running DSM 7.1.

The idea is that I can backup Amiga OS and then when needed restore back the files.

Anyone know if there is anything that will do this with a faster approach than Samba?
Ideally I’m also looking to setup a bootable floppy disk in case of catastrophic failure to do the restore with if needed. Has anyone done anything like this? Any Apps freely available?

Pointers/Help welcome!

Cheers Mangs!

[thomas]

Samba won't keep protection bits, either. To achieve this you would have to create a backup archive on the Amiga, for example with LhA, and transfer the archive to the remote storage.

Regarding speed, I am afraid there is nothing fast on the Amiga by today's standards. Disk speed is slow, CPU speed is slow, network speed is really slow.

The fastest solution is to connect the Amiga harddrive or CF card to a PC and use WinUAE to do the backup.

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by thomas

Samba won't keep protection bits, either. To achieve this you would have to create a backup archive on the Amiga, for example with LhA, and transfer the archive to the remote storage.

Regarding speed, I am afraid there is nothing fast on the Amiga by today's standards. Disk speed is slow, CPU speed is slow, network speed is really slow.

The fastest solution is to connect the Amiga harddrive or CF card to a PC and use WinUAE to do the backup.

Thanks Thomas. Good to know. That’s a shame

Maybe a gap someone could develop perhaps?

[Daedalus]

The protection bits are an Amiga-specific thing and simply aren't supported elsewhere. Moving the files into a foreign environment can't keep them intact, be it via FTP, Samba, or even directly with CrossDOS or Fat95.

All my main machines (Amigas and Windows & Linux PCs) have at least one extra hard drive that I use for backing up. For the Amiga it means that files can be copied (e.g. using BackUp) and will keep their comments and protection bits, and in the event of a drive failure it's trivial to boot from the backup drive instead.

The really critical files like code, artwork and so on are less reliant on Amiga-specific attributes, so I just back them up to my NAS using SMBFS and BackUp. I don't have any issues with the speed of this operation since the total amount of data changed is relatively low.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

All my main machines (Amigas and Windows & Linux PCs) have at least one extra hard drive that I use for backing up. For the Amiga it means that files can be copied (e.g. using BackUp) and will keep their comments and protection bits, and in the event of a drive failure it's trivial to boot from the backup drive instead.

I do the same on my Amiga because it is really easy/comfortable if you have the space for a second hard drive. The only problem would be if both drives die the same time.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, if something really catastrophic happens, I'll be able to rebuild the installations. It'll be a pain, but the OS, games and programs can all be reinstalled from scratch, leaving things like documents, code and artwork, which can be reinstated from elsewhere. Not a fun prospect, but it wouldn't be a total loss.

[Leon Besson]

Interesting Mangs!

At the moment I’m using SD cards in SD2SCSI V6. To currently back these up I end up removing them from the Amiga and using a Multi-card reader and a PC use Win Image to backup onto some spare hard Drives.

I was looking for a better way and thought since I have a Synology and the Amigas are networked with RoadShow, this could be something to investigate.
Obviously Network speed is a issue.

I remember in the day using Windows NT that Microsoft had RIS for remote building windows PCs. It’s a shame there is nothing like this for the Amiga

[vk3heg]

Try "FolderSync2"

http://aminet.net/package/util/cli/FolderSync2

I haven't tried it across a network, but do use it to copy/sync files on my BBS system going to a secondary hd.

[Jope]

Another vote for the LhA method. I tend to use it without compression, since storage is so cheap these days. I'd rather it archives quickly.

[jPV]

I mostly use the "spare HD/USB stick" method, but then I also have something backupped on image files that can reside anywhere.

For example, I have image files that are formatted to SFS and I can then mount them on my Amiga (*). It doesn't matter if the image files reside on an external USB drive, in an SMBFS share, or in any other alien media. In this way you can use backup/copy programs on Amiga to update/resync files on an image file keeping the protection bits etc.

Funny thing is that if I copy bunch of small files (like system backup) into a mounted image file that resides in an SMBFS share, it copies the files quicker than copying directly into the share :P At least with the default settings, but maybe there could be some tuning with buffers etc...

*) My Amiga is a MorphOS machine in this case, but I guess the same can be done on classic Amigas too. In any case the process goes like this: create a null file and place it where ever you want it to reside, mount it with the FileImageCtrl tool, partition&format it like you'd format any other drive, copy files & profit.

PS. I don't like backupping with LhA that much... there's always some overhead, it's harder to restore/update big archives, you'll have to remember to set all kinds of options to keep everything intact (for example to use correct header levels if you have deep directory structures etc).

[golem]

Interesting read. I also backup using LhA method. It takes ages to archive as one drive so I archive top level folders into separate archives. Some of them never change so I don’t need to do them each time. Once archived I copy the Lhas to my Synology with smbfs. Will have to look into image files after jPV and I also use no lha compression like Jope

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by golem

Interesting read. I also backup using LhA method. It takes ages to archive as one drive so I archive top level folders into separate archives. Some of them never change so I don’t need to do them each time. Once archived I copy the Lhas to my Synology with smbfs.

I do similar. Make sure you have bootable media that can mount the smb share in case of an emergency.

I have a GOTEK floppy emulator and a bootable image that contains just enough to get online and mount my smb share.

[Matt_H]

This might be prohibitively slow:
ftp via FTPMount
Copy files into a hard drive disk image on the FTP: volume.

[alpine9000]

You could try this tool I wrote. I use it for incremental backups remotely to a PC

https://github.com/alpine9000/squirt