After learning our lesson on backups and drive failures, I decided to purchase two identical Drobos. They are 5D’s that for now are using the USB 3 interface connected to Windows 7 computers. My original plan was to just use one at our photo studio and put one at home to do a sync with for redundancy and for working at home on weekends, storms, etc. That said, I wanted to use “file sync” type software instead of just backup software.
After reading every thread I could find I still am having issues with what I should do to make it work. I have downloaded the trial for SyncbackPro which had a synchronization feature that appears to do what I would like to do. They require SFTP to make it work as a supported feature. I am way willing to try it to see if it will work for us.
As a note: I tried CrashPlan and even called them. They do not support or suggest “file level” syncing with their computer to computer option as versioning is an issue.
Any suggestions on software that would be able to do the SFTP on a Win 7 PC? I spent hours trying to set it up myself through Windows and online tutorials, I have probably done more damage than good.
Also any other advise on better ways to go with large data files is appreciated.
You seem to be entering into a more sophisticated, professional level of data protection/storage. My first reaction with your post was to look at Crashplan but I see you did that. For a prosumer situation that seems a good way to go. For more technical file level stuff you can look at rsync which has a lot of support and development behind it.
Once you start talking about synchronizing over networks it gets complicated. But if you just have simple docs and files that you want to have backed up in the background to two different places, then Crashplan seems ideal. Especially, since it would be free (if you dont use their online service).
Thanks for the suggestion of rsync, but I think I would rather go with a commercial product that would automatically do these and stick to my core competency! I am sure some have this as their core for their software. Just like the Drobo, I wanted someone to call not build another nas. Thanks.
However, it doesn’t address your remote connectivity - if you want someone to handle your remote accessibility, you’re back to Internet/cloud-ish solutions (or Transporter, but Transporter Sync doesn’t support Drobo yet). PogoPlug PCmight let you see the remote PC’s storage as a drive and let you sync the locla drive with the remote drive using ViceVersa but I haven’t tried it.
I use the Backup method, with the Archiving function, so anything that would normally be overwritten or deleted during the backup gets moved to a temporary location. That way I have limited undelete/rollback capability.
The VVEngine is an automated scheduler - you may not need it if you’re okay running a scheduled task or the like, but I like its real-time synchronization.
hi kevin, is your home computer (and office computer) on the same network?
eg, can you map to one of the other computer’s drives at some point?
if so, then you should be able to use syncback on a mapped drive.
i use syncback for mirroring most of the folders from my gen1 drobo onto the gen2 drobo.
(and after setting it up in test mode, and then knowing what do to, it never fails)
There are many similar products - I just like VV because it features date/time as well as CRC copy validation (you can also limit the CRC check to the first X bytes if you have huge files and more than zero trust), because I’ve had problems with network copies getting corrrupted in the past so now I’m super paranoid about it.
