Backup Best Practices

[JKEdmo]

Good morning,

 

When I back up a project, the zip file is pretty large.  No surprised there for a 3D program.

 

I was wondering if people have any best practices for backing up a project, namely is there a way to purge a plan file of unwanted elements, materials, images, etc. before I back up?

 

Thanks again,

 

Jim

 

 

[robdyck]

You can easily purge materials in the Plan Materials dialog, and the same goes for CAD blocks. The next items to strip out would probably be unused CAD details, Cross sections, furniture, and framing. However, I'd be hesitant to strip a plan too much just for the sake of backup. I'd get a larger backup drive before I started stripping files; if you need to re-use those plan files, it's nice when they are as complete as possible.

[JKEdmo]

Thanks Robert for your input.

 

Jim

 

 

[CharlesVolz]

4 hours ago, robdyck said:

I'd get a larger backup drive before I started stripping files; if you need to re-use those plan files, it's nice when they are as complete as possible.

 

Agree!

 

Online storage is cheap. That is where I would suggest you backup.

[Kbird1]

20 hours ago, JKEdmo said:

materials, images, etc. before I back up?

 

I agree with the Others,  buy yourself (another?)  a 8TB-12TB Ext. HDD drive, the WD Elements works well for me..... and put on the Cloud too. ( for redundancy)

 

Materials can add a lot to a Full backup of Plans Or Layouts size but if you are in the Practice of placing new Textures in the Chief Textures Folder and have CA set to also do so with new Materials in Preferences , you can likely get away with just Zipping the Layout and Plan up instead , of course you'll want to be backup the CA Data Folder to an External ( or Internal ) HDD too , I use SyncbackFree for that purpose.

 

Mick.

[para-CAD]

I wonder if having too many external HHDs can become a problem?

 

 

[Kbird1]

8 minutes ago, para-CAD said:

I wonder if having too many external HHDs can become a problem?

 

 

 

Probably not if you are that organized

 

M.

[JKEdmo]

Yes, I already have 3 backup hard drives (reminder to myself -- need to check today they are running!).  The question was more motivated by keeping PLAN file small enough to send as email attachment.  Usually need to keep under 30 Mb for gmail.  I find emailing attachments easiest, but in a pinch can send link for downloading.

 

Thanks for feedback,

 

Jim

[Kbird1]

 

If you don't use a lot of custom textures , just zipping the plan file itself should suffice , though you may run into issues for example if you use something from a Bonus Library the other User doesn't have installed, as everyone has the Core Library stuff.

 

M.

[Electromen]

I use Good Sync which is software only.

It backs up my entire Documents folder plus several otter Folders like X15 Data and Libraries.

It also backs up thousands of photos and hours of video., including QuickBooks and all my invoices

It can backup from several internal or external drives on the computer.

 

It backs this all up to My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra containing two - 6TB solid state drives.

The second 6TB drive mirrors the first one using Raid 1.

With the My Cloud, I can open any of theses files on my iPhone using the My Cloud app.  I can also open them on any internet connected computer.

 

This may sound confusing but once it's setup, it's easy to backup.  Files are backed up to two SSD drives in the My cloud.  So if the computer fails, I have two copies