[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It sounds like Dropbox isn't designed for this kind of backup system. But I'm afraid I don't know what is.

Yes, well...it's changed, quite a bit, since I first implemented DB back in...IDK, '08 or '09? I first went to DB when my first bookmaker came to work part-time for me, a guy across a given pond. It was at the time the best and easiest file-sharing method, plus it had the added benefit of allowing me to access my working files and travel, too.

But: they have changed the synching protocols. No two ways about it. I've "hotswapped" RAIDS before. (Yes, I know, that's misspeaking, but you get my drift.) I did it to go up to the 2.0TB drive and I didn't spend weeks reinstalling the data and I most certainly didn't get corrupted, fiddled modification dates, which is pissing me off no end. They've changed something and that's significantly altered how it works.

We have ~14 bookmakers and 3 admin employees, working around the globe. We handle MASSIVE files, I mean, it's not uncommon for us to do intake on 3gig source files. It's simply...too b*ggering unwieldy for me (or anyone in admin) to a) download that sort of source file from a customer; b) share it in a different way with my Queen o'Quotes (my person who does all our qutoing); then c) move it yet again to production, whereupon d) the bookmaker then has to download it to his/her computer, e) work on it locally and then f) reupload the result to the Project Management System (but wait, there's more!) from whence g) our Doyenne of Customer Delight h) ships it to the customer (via 128-bit secured, encrypted links) who then i) downloads it/them to his/her computer. (Oh, I forget our QA, our Princess of Perfection, who has to download the files, check them, and then upload her comments to the production teams and when applicable, customers, too.)

I mean...I'd turn into a human file server. I'd need Shiva's arms. I mean, for me, instead to file serve those around, on an as-needed basis, to the crew members, in a more controlled way, rather than relying on the cloud-sharing capabilities. That described ONE project and we have 135-150 books running at any given time. Granted, they're not all 3gig. We have many that are just word processing files, 1mb tops, or the like. But the bottom line is, the fastest, easiest way to do that is some sort of Cloud-based sharing. One download by admin to the system; then sharing the file links as required, across our internal "network" of comptuers (not a real network), and it saves untold hours of up/downloading.

This is a real pisser.

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Hitch, you aren't Unix based, are you? (I think you aren't) Or even Mac (which is Unix at heart).

I manage Unix backups, and could talk you through a backup to disk system .... and then you post those disks to someone, as described above, for your offsite backup. Unix can do incremental backups nicely .... unless all your data looks like a single item (a Virtual PC, for instance, looks like a single file to Unix, I believe).

Badgood, I appreciate that enormously, but while we have two Mac users in admin and a crew (bookmaking) that use Macs, the "big" computer and main..."terminal" for everything, the Charing Cross Station (for NYers, Port Authority) of the business is me and that's all PC, all the time. Plus, realistically, although they've tried to do this and that to be more inclusive, KDP is really fashioned around PCs, not Macs. (Not that this is relevant, but Apple pissed me off very badly once and from that day forward, I won't give them a penny of my money. Won't even buy music through them any longer.)

We did discuss lighting the fires under our older Linux Server that we have around here some damned place, and using that for the incrementals. GMTA, as we say at my shop (GIM-tah!), or Great Minds Think Alike. :-) But, I think I'm probably going to end up with Hemmi's solution, below:

Originally Posted by Hemmi

How about a low tech solution of one of those fireproof safes to keep your backup in?

Yup and that's what we're thinking. I can double-bang the Dropbox, by MultClouding it to Amazon S3, "just in case," and we've laid in some more 6TB drives and I guess that's it. I'll need to ensure it's theft-proof too, though. I know, it sounds stupid--I mean, REALLY, who the hell wants to rip off a computer that's really nothing but full of books?--but the two hard-disk recovery concerns are fire and theft. If I can ensure that the Fireproof can't just be picked up and snagged, I don't see an alternative.

Then we can simply do a backup, and then incrementals for however long at a time, (and our backup is ALSO a RAID, by the way--can you say "paranoid person," anyone?), and slap 'em in the Fireproof.

Honestly, it kinda boggles me how I got to this point. I've kludged together this entire system, using 4 different SAAS systems (Salesforce for admin/email; Freshbooks for accounting; TeamworkPM for project management and Dropbox for "file sharing") and mostly, it works. To replace it with something more robust, something smoother and more commercial would run me so many thousands, if not tens of, that I might as well pack up my ball and bat and go home.

Sigh. Oh, well. Fireproof safes, here I come. If anyone here has any recommendations, kindly do let me know.

I appreciate all the thinking caps, folks. I was hoping that somebody had a miraculous cure, but I was already fairly sure, when I asked, that we'd exhausted the options. Bummer!

Thanks again, seriously. I genuinely appreciate your collective time. guys!

Hitch