backup your stuff! ….for 39kb on mac or 176kb on windows.
Computers suck. They can die on you at the worst time and you don’t want to lose your important stuff, like your mp3 collection…
I’m not really interested in backup systems that restore my computer to certain points in time, like time-machine. Although these are well designed and useful systems, they can be confusing and you can lose track of your files, as such systems are time based. All I want is a simple, reliable tool that archives important stuff, so I have peace of mind that my precious files are BACKED UP! So I wrote my own little backup utility in Python.
I originally wrote this for my personal Mac, and later adapted the script to work on Windows. I use windows for work, and there is a lot of data created daily that needs to be kept safe. The script backs up to external hard drives. I have multiple drives enabled on the Windows version that I use at work so I can rotate the drives daily -keeping one drive offsite (in case or fire, burglary, rodents etc). The other handy thing about the Windows one is that you can log out and it will run and then it can shut your machine down when finished (if you wish to shutdown). So once set up -all you need to do is log out of your machine and it takes care of everything.
The scripts are basically an organiser around the unix ‘rsync’ utility. Rsync doesn’t exist on Windows systems, so I have included an rsync.exe in the Windows version.
Both of the bundles have a folder of little bits and pieces. In the folder is the main Python script, you will need to open this in a decent text editor and edit some of the details to make it customized for your system. Note it is best to run the script via an automation system. The Windows version has an ‘instructions’ file for how to do this and setup Windows Scheduler. The Mac version has a cron file for automating via commandline with crontab. If you set this automation you can literally ’set and forget’. The script has inbuilt mail notification, which provides all information about the script output, so you can monitor the process.
Ahhh, peace of mind.