FTP Backup
Backup to a remote server or to your web site by using FTP Backup!
Do you know how to make an Ftp backup?
If so, are your backups secured? If you have access to:
A server on the Internet or
if you have a web site. Then one attractive alternative for storing of your data are over the Internet to the remote storage area by using an FTP transfer. Many computer users have access to data storage on web sites or servers, but they don’t always know how to use them for storage using FTP storage. To be able to backup data remotely is the best way to protect your valuable data in case your computer ceases to exist.
You must take some sort of data backup to prevent vital data loss in case your hard disk becomes inaccessible or in case your whole computer is lost. There can be several causes for computer loss or hard disk loss!
Here are some:
- The building in which you have your computer burn down.
- You can be victim of a natural disaster.
- Your computer can get stolen.
- Other causes for data loss can be hard disk crashes.
- Or virus infections.
FTP can be difficult to use for ordinary computer users. Are you an expert in FTP protocol, winsock and FTP scripts? You don’t need any longer to be a computer professional to use FTP to make online backup. It is not that difficult to use!
This easy to follow tutorial will guide you in the process step by step The first step you have to take is to decide which data you want to backup.
Which data is important to you?
In your work?
In private use? In our example we use WinBackup. We first start by creating a backup file of the data that we want to backup and save this file on to our Windows computer. Note: You must have enough space on your hard drive for temporary storage of the backup file. WinBackup is equipped with a basic user interface with easy to use commands.
It is without hard to figure out settings. Yet it is still powerful and you can perform most advanced operations that you will that you need.
A wizard is included in the program which gives you an overview of the steps you have to use to create a backup.
It also gives you the steps you need to use to restore the backup if you want to recreate your files.
In this step by step guide we will take as our example:
How to backup emails stored in Office Outlook!!
First we need to create a backup job for this task. We do this by naming the job file to “New Backup Outlook1”.
In our case we add the Microsoft Outlook Office Emails to the current backup job. As you can see there many other default folders you can mark such as:
- Outlook Express Emails
- Address books
- Internet Favorites
- Desktop
- My Documents
But, remember that first you need to have enough space to store the created backup file on your own computer in order to make backup with FTP.
Here we name the backup of the outlook express emails to outlook1.w2b
The backup file is stored in folder c:\bk1
Each step in the WinBackup backup process is made by clicking on the blue arrow on the right. In this case to get to the next step we click on Continue to Job Settings.
You can also of course return to the previous step by clicking on the left arrow. WinBackup can also store the backup on to CD or DVD. You can backup to consecutive CD/DVD's. This is called spanning.
By doing this you can store large amounts of data, even your whole hard drive.
Here we can set parameters for the backup. There are two types of Backups.
- Total backup: The Backup is of all data in a single backup.
- Incremental backup: The backup is made of the change from the previous backup.
- Fast: Check media integrity.
- Secure: Compare and check all data.
We choose the have the backup file at the default medium compress level. This saves hard disk space on your hard disk and minimizes the backup transfer time over the web. There are four options: No compression, Fast (low compression), Normal (Medium compression and Max (Maximum compression).
You can achieve even smaller backup with the maximum compression level and minimize transfer time.
We password protect the backup so that it is made secure. When we transfer the backup to a remote location using FTP to a web site server it can be vulnerable from outside penetration. This treat is eliminated by having the backup encrypted with a password. The whole content of the backup file is then encrypted. You can choose to have no password protection.
You can set the password encryption to low, medium or strong.
Here can set if you want to make repeat backups. You can set to schedule your backup daily, weekly and monthly with an interactive interface.
By Clicking on the Run Backup command the backup starts. The backup of the Outlook Express email files are now in progress and the content is written to the target file at c:\bk1\outlook1.w2b
As you can see you can follow the progress of the backup process. The backup job compresses the backed up files into the backup.
The backup size in our example is 255 MB. But, it’s not enough to store the file on the same hard disk. We want to make an ftp backup. We do this by transferring this file to disk space that are available on the ftp server located somewhere on the Internet. This can be:
- At your own web site
- On a server you have access to
The critical data that you don’t want to lose, are normally the data your work with on a daily basis. This can be documents in Word, PowerPoint, Excel or it can be a database over your clients.
Or in your case it’s the emails that are stored in Outlook Express. Of course you can create the Internet backup from whole sections of your hard drive or even the entire hard drive. How feasible this is depends on the space you have on your computer, the space that are available for storage on the remote server and on the speed of your Internet connection. In our example we will do a remote backup to a web site we have hosted at Powweb
This is a low cost web host on which we have available 5GB of disk space. This is the standard configuration while hosting at Powweb.
5 GB of disk is overkill for storing a web site, unless you use a lot of multimedia. The average web site uses less than 100 MB or even 10 MB of disk space. In our case we have well over 4500 MB of free disk space which can be used for data storage. This is enough to store the vital data information that most users use in their day to day work which need to be protect with extra security. Next step is to transfer the backup file from your PC or client to the remote storage on the internet using an ftp transfer software. We use in our example We use in our example WS_FTP Home for the backup transfer.
The WS_FTP series of software from Ipswitch Inc. are the most commonly used File Transfer Protocol products in the market.
First we have to connect to the remote server when we start using the WS_FTP Home client software.
In our case it is to our web site! We name the connection in our example “NicheEx”
For host address you use your domain name www.whateveryourdomainis.com
Except you put in ftp instead of www as in ftp.whateveryourdomainis.com.
For user name and password you use the user name and password you’ve got from your web host or from the administrator of the server. You save this setting and connect to the server.
We are now logged on. This is a picture from WS_FTP Home left view which shows the server folders. We click on the add new folder button.
We create a new folder on the web server for our backup.
We call this folder Backup1.
On the left view is our computer's C: drive.
On the right side is our web site's file structure.
You double click on c:\bk1 where the backup file is stored and you double click on the Backup1 directory on the server side where you want to have the backup file stored.
To start the FTP storage transfer to the sever we have to click on the right arrow. After the file has been marked you then click on the upload arrow.
When you click on the upload arrow the transfer over the Internet starts.
Now the FTP data file transfer is going on. The transfer time will depend on the size of the backup and the speed of the Internet connection. If you have a broadband connection you can transfer and store larger backups To learn more about WS_FTP Home go to this FTP tutorial for help!! Now that your important data is stored at a remote and secure location you must make sure that the information about the backup is kept at a safe place. Preferably at a building where you don’t keep the computer that the backup come from. Keep this information about your remote backup at a safe place:
- The password for the encryption of the backup.
- The login of the Server or web site.
- The password of the Server or web site.
- The name of the backup software 'WinBackup'
If you need to recover and restore the backup data then the procedure is in reverse. Transfer and download the backup file back to the computer using ftp software.
Run WinBackup and restore your data from the backup file.
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