Site backup

[strefethen]

Is there a recommended way to backup an entire site? I frequently try to backup my site using FTP and inevitably it times out during a copy operation and fails. Are there any tools which make this reliable?

Thanks!
-Steve
http://www.stevetrefethen.com/blog/

[bruce]

We backup your website on a nightly basis.


In general, your website content doesn't change much, why would you want to pull it down regularly?


Bruce

DiscountASP.NET
www.DiscountASP.NET (http://www.DiscountASP.NET)

[strefethen]

Hi Bruce,
The DASP knowledge base states:

'We do perform system backups daily as part of our emergency recovery plan, however, our services do not include backup storage of your web site. We recommend that you maintain a backup of your web site on your local computer.'

It goes on to say:

'If necessary, we can go into our backups to retrieve web site files, however we charge a fee to perform the search and file recovery. Also, we cannot guarantee that the files that we recover will be the most recent snapshot of your site.'

I'm simply trying to do what is suggested. I typically blog a few times a week so yes, my content does change though it's typically a tiny percentage of my overall site. However, rather than manually backup each file that I add I'd prefer a reliable automated mechanism and I'd be interested to know if anyone else has a solution that works for them.

Thanks
-Steve

[bruce]

I see what you are saying. We suggest customer keep a backup of their site on their own computer. You'd be surprise how many users do NOT have a backup copy on their computer.

If your site has content that is created / updated by the web app, you should backup those files.

As of currently, there's no backup API available for website content.

YOu can consider just moving the updated files. Have you tried using VS.NET's copy website feature, it will compare your local machine's file to the remote machine's file. I believe it can be configured to sync the 2 locations.

Alternatively, there are many FTP sync software available

http://www.fileware.com/products.htm
http://www.ftpsynchronizer.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ftpsync/

Hope this helps.

Bruce

DiscountASP.NET
www.DiscountASP.NET (http://www.DiscountASP.NET)

[strefethen]

I did look at using VS.NET but what I would prefer is a command line. I've setup a script to execute using the windows command line FTP tool but it sucks and times out etc.

Thanks for the list of additional tools, much appreciated.

If you have any specific recommendation I'm all ears.

Thanks again for the reply.
-Steve