Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Sunday, 02 June 2019 13:13 CDT

trogladyte

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EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach a ZIP file containing your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue. If the file is over 2Mb, please upload it on your server and post a link to it.

Description of my issue:

I managed to get Akeeba to backup to my iDrive account (it's a new iDrive, not iDriveSync account) by ensuring I had the checkbox checked. I get a success confirmation and can watch the Post-Processing happen correctly (well as I see it happening for Amazon S3 wich has been my offsite backup till now).

Here's a link to the log file - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2bqq5vbdhq3sb53/Akeeba%20Backup%20Debug%20Log.txt?dl=0

My issue is that there's no sign of the saved archive in iDrive. I had added thesites/capitol-para to the directory field and thought maybe directories weren't automatically created like in Amazon S3. So I reran the backup with the field empty. Sill nothing shows in iDrive.

The backup file is a little over 75Mb, but I didn't split it (well, I did on the initial backup, but have latterly sent it all in one file without issue).

Monday, 03 June 2019 00:28 CDT

nicholas

iDrive and iDriveSync are two different products. You are forgiven for being mistaken, their names are very confusing indeed.

iDriveSync lets you store arbitrary files and have them automatically appear on multiple computers, much like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive etc. They have an API for that and we support it as an Akeeba Backup remote storage destination.

iDrive is a managed backup solution. It is a combination of software running on your computer, an online service and an online storage. It's meant to back up your entire computer or server and let you easily restore it. There is no API for storing individual files on it. As a result it is NOT supported as an Akeeba Backup remote storage destination.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Monday, 03 June 2019 10:16 CDT

trogladyte

Darn. I worried you were going to say that Nicholas! :-) iDrive is so cheap - far cheaper than Amazon S3 which is part of the reason I switched. Plus it would have allowed me to get all my backup files in one place.

When I was talking to support at iDrive he asked, "Do you mean using WebDAV?" when I was questioning him about this. Is it possible to use WebDAV to upload to iDrive? Another option (though I'm not totally sure how to do this or even if it's a good idea) would be to make my computer a server, then use Upload to a remote FTP Server.

Just trying to simplify things.

Monday, 03 June 2019 10:55 CDT

nicholas

If they do offer a WebDAV endpoint Akeeba Backup does support uploading to WebDAV. It's just that I don't see any mention of iDrive having WebDAV support. Only iDriveSync does and yes, that's how we support iDriveSync: through our WebDAV integration.

The reason iDrive offers a greatly reduced price is deduplication. That is to say, if your computer has 256GB of files and you take four backups you "consume" 1TB of space. Only that it's not true. I'd say that about 50% of your files are OS and application files which are present, identically on thousands of other computers. So your real usage is 128GB per backup. However, every time you run a backup only a fraction of these files has really changed. So your real space consumption is around 128GB, not 1TB. Taking into account how many of your other files may be downloaded off the 'net and be the same as other files, other people have your real usage is probably just over 50GB for what is ostensibly 1TB of backups. And that's how iDrive and similar services can sell you what looks like a lot of space for what looks like too cheap. They don't get hard drives, servers and electricity free of charge. They just know that 95% of your data is duplicates so while it counts towards your quota it's not counting towards their hard disk space.

Amazon S3, BackBlaze and other similar isolated file storage services do not use deduplication. They really store all of your data on hard disks with various duplication policies (i.e. your data is recorded in more than one place at a time). This offers better resilience and privacy (which in many business cases is a regulatory requirement, not a tinfoil hat galley argument).

As I told you before, if you want the cheapest storage that offers a good deal of security and privacy you should use BackBlaze B2 and a sane policy for removing older backups.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Monday, 03 June 2019 11:56 CDT

trogladyte

You're right Nicholas, they don't support WebDAV. Why the other support guy mentioned it I have no idea. That's why I wondered if they did.

And thanks for the very interesting explanation of iDrive et al and the way they operate. Quite deceptive, and, sadly, more and more typical of how companies are operating today.

Love the pricing on BackBlaze B2! Thanks for the recommendation. Will be giving Amazon and iDrive the boot. :-)

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