What folders or locations on HomeTroller to backup?

[hsrandomuser]

Hi,

I've got a HomeTroller/HS4 and was wondering what specifically is best to backup? I've got a Synology and generic share (SMB/NFS, etc).

I installed Synology's Active Backup and am around 20GB (drive is 64GB it looks like). I figured that I'd probably only need a few files or directories and even though I do have much more available, I only wanted to backup what's necessary.

It's easy enough to use a client like this or even Windows itself to do backups since they create bootable images.

How do folks handle this?

Thanks

[Bradkw]

Backup the entire Program Files (x86)\Homeseer directory. If you ever need to restore or move to a new system, you can reinstall Homeseer, and then copy your backup over top of the Homeseer folder. That will give you a 100% restore. You should also back up your Z-wave network. I use the BLBackup plugin and save it to a network drive and then back that up too. I always have a month or two of backups to use in case.

[Guest]

I use the included scheduler and the backup utility in HS4 and it generates 2 files every Monday which I copy to another directory on my HT, to an external small USB drive attached to the HT and once in a while I copy these files off the HT to my laptop. I keep about 5 backups and make one before and after every upgrade. I have a backup of the HT software running on my laptop in case we Iose the Hometroller. Paranoid? Yes - maybe.... on the plus side - have yet to hit an outage. The files can be found here:

[jon00]

I use the included scheduler and the backup utility in HS4 and it generates 2 files every Monday which I copy to another directory on my HT, to an external small USB drive attached to the HT and once in a while I copy these files off the HT to my laptop. I keep about 5 backups and make one before and after every upgrade. I have a backup of the HT software running on my laptop in case we Iose the Hometroller. Paranoid? Yes - maybe.... on the plus side - have yet to hit an outage. The files can be found here:

I really cannot recommend using the inbuilt HS4 backup system apart from using it as a secondary backup mechanism. It only backs up the scripts, html, Data and Config folders (plus JSON database) so not easy to restore if you do have corruption. None of the root files which contain the main operation of HS4 are covered.

I have to recommend backing up the entire Homeseer 4 directory as suggested by Bradkw using the OP's Synology's Active Backup or the BLBackup plugin.

[Guest]

JonOO - thank you for your advice and I will begin grabbing the the entire directory. I'm not lacking for space... Any downside to just stopping HS4 and just copying the whole directory?

[Bradkw]

Any downside to just stopping HS4 and just copying the whole directory?

No downside! Zip it or copy it as is. It has the same effect. Just keep it somewhere safe.

[Guest]

Thank you both

[randy]

I agree with everything said. I use BLBackup twice a day and keep 30 backups. That gives me two weeks if I have to roll back. I also image the entire server drive with Macirum Reflect, giving me the means to fully restore after a SSD failure - which happened to me a few years ago.

Additionally another habit I have is to grab the whole HS directory structure (while shut down) and place it on the desktop of the server any time I do a HomeSeer or critical plugin update. It makes rolling back a breeze if there is a problem.