Backup, Backup and More Backup

[TC1]

Let me offer some software-agnostic thoughts. I recently lost my SSD drive on the HS4 server... so I had to reload everything. Using the cloud "Restore Function" hosted by HST I discovered that the only directories zipped up and saved were:

Config
Data
html
scripts

So, if you have any other personal goodies in any other folder, like Media, etc., it won't be saved. My point being, don't rely on the cloud to save everything you might need. Caveat Emptor.

Agree 100%. To rely on an application to back itself up is kind of foolish from a risk management and disaster recovery perspective (both of which I do professionally). I know some folks are running on Pi's/Linux, but you need to implement a backup process that sits outside of HS (such as rsync or scripting something to copy directories). On Windows I simply use one of the many free tools that can backup an entire partition or individual directories as needed. Makes rollback or recovery a very easy task.

[mulu]

Agree 100%. To rely on an application to back itself up is kind of foolish from a risk management and disaster recovery perspective (both of which I do professionally). I know some folks are running on Pi's/Linux, but you need to implement a backup process that sits outside of HS (such as rsync or scripting something to copy directories). On Windows I simply use one of the many free tools that can backup an entire partition or individual directories as needed. Makes rollback or recovery a very easy task.

Depends on what you define as "rely on". If you mean it's your only backup then I agree. But the HS built-in backup works pretty well for recovering from a power outage that destroys your HS DB/json files. I still don't understand why HST can't solve the main problem of corrupted json files in case of an unexpected shutdown. Anyways, I use the built-in backup as a first solution to recover and then, if necessary, go back to other backups done outside of HS.

Having said that, don't rely on those "copy folder" backups. It works for HS but doesn't work for most other programs as they have settings, data, etc. distributed all over your drive. If you just backup the folder in program files you probably will miss other essential data. Backups built into SW can take care of this and make sure all the necessary information was collected. Then your next backup is making a backup of the backup that the software produced.

[TC1]

Having said that, don't rely on those "copy folder" backups. It works for HS but doesn't work for most other programs...
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Last time I checked we weren't talking about other programs, so it works perfectly fine for HS which is what we were talking about.

[mulu]

Last time I checked we weren't talking about other programs, so it works perfectly fine for HS which is what we were talking about.

You said "To rely on an application to back itself up is kind of foolish". That's a general statement applying to all kinds of applications including HS. There are very few applications that can be backed up by just copying a folder. So my point is simply that 1) HS backing up its own data works rather well for what I used it so far and 2) what might work for HS (just copying a folder) will fail for the majority of applications out there.