Can anybody explain how Copy.com works to me?
 

I'm running Xubuntu and it was a challenge just getting Copy.com on there. (I installed the desktop app on both of my computers.) Now that I have it though, I don't really know how to use it.

I know this is kind of more a Copy.com question, but I don't know anything about Copy.com (besides having it--lol) and besides, I like you LQ guys. :)

So yeah, I installed the desktop app for Copy.com on both of my computers. I know that if I put something in the Copy folder that will be available to both computers.

But how Copy does the backing up I don't know.

When I change a file or folder do I have to plop that into the Copy folder every time or does Copy somehow update the file or folder in the Copy folder automatically? (It doesn't seem to.)

Okay, when I, say, take the Documents folder from one computer and plop it into the Copy folder that's that. Then I take the Documents folder from the other computer and plop that into the Copy folder, then all the files from both folders will be in the Copy folder (and the Copy cloud), right?

Now I just removed a couple of files from a folder and copied and pasted the folder into the Copy folder. But then when I looked at the Copy folder the files I'd deleted were still there. What's the process? How does it work?

I mean, how does this work as a way of backing things up AND organizing things? To me it seems like a decent way of throwing stuff into the Copy folder (and cloud), but how is that different than Google Drive? I mean, that's not really a backup, is it? It's like a flash drive in the cloud.

And when I combined the same folders (with the same titles anyway, but they each had different files within them) from the two computers I'd expected each folder on each computer to have all the same files that were cumulatively on both. Instead, they're the same. And the cumulative is only on the Copy folder.

I like the notion of just throwing the folders and files into the Copy folder. It's much quicker than Google Drive. But the backing up feature eludes me and the syncing feature makes me fearful that I'll lose data or that the files will become hopelessly less organized.

Thanks.

the first i have herd of the web site and it's app

frankly i have never wanted to buy $$$ something that is built in

rsync and ftp work great


to quote the license
https://www.copy.com/about/tos/
that right there is a "NO f'ing way " deal buster right there


and if you do not mind some unprivacy
google drive has 25 Gig storage for free
( and all the files on my g-drive are under the CC-by-sa and are PUBLIC )

it dose not


it looks to only be a "share" drive on someone else's server
and they can FREELY use your files for any purpose

Thanks John. I wasn't aware of that license. Thanks. Wow. That makes Copy.com seem really scummy. I know of a lot of techie people that use it, though. I wonder if they're just unaware or if it doesn't bother them.

I've got Google Drive too, but only 15GB. How'd you get 25?

And so you're saying you don't trust Google Drive either? (I don't myself but I have nothing that sensitive.)

Oh. I have the Copy on both machines. I'll start investigating rsync and ftp. I looked around a little and rsync looks like it's just for syncing the computers. Oh well. Back to the lab again. Appreciate the information. :)

There's also scp to look at as well for one time copies, but rsync is better for keeping two directories in sync. Remember, rsync can be run over ssh )-e ssh), so there's no need to run an rsync server if you don't want to.

I don't know if this will apply to you, but I had trouble figuring it out. If you need to pass any paramaters to SSH (port, keyfile, login name, etc) you'll need to do something like this:
Basically, all the needed paramaters are passed directly to SSH, which you will have to put in quotes.

EDIT:
On second thought, you could also mess with your ssh config file, and put the needed paramaters in there for your particular host, but I've never messed with that.

I read good things about deja dup, which seems to be integrated in Ubuntu as the standard backup solution. I haven't used it myself (I stick to rsync, too) but you might want to try that out for backup purposes.
As far as cloud services I fully agree with previous posters: I wouldn't upload my data to any random servers, at least not unencrypted.
You posted in another thread that you now have two computers available. If you feel bold you might set one of them up as a server and run owncloud on it.

Thanks bt. So rsync is just for syncing, right? I don't even know if I understand that. My head gets turned around with this stuff. As I understood what syncing meant, it meant you combined what was in the two computers (and as I understood it it was in a cloud).

Backup is a whole different story then, right?

Thanks maples. I'm sure that will make more sense to me as I begin to understand this stuff better.

Thanks joe. I don't even know if I need syncing. A friend just got me interested in Copy.com for the free cloud storage there. Then I found out Copy's main functionality was backing up the whole computer--and syncing.

Really I think all I need is an effective backup. Does rsync back stuff up too? I'll check into this deja dup.

You might as well have used something like Dropbox - at least they claim they won't steal your data.
Your data is held encrypted - but Dropbox hold the encryption keys! :newbie:

Rsync would work just fine for backups. I use something like this to backup my laptop to an external drive:
A breakdown of what's happening:
-a: Archive. It preserves permissions, ownerships, and timestamps, as well as recursing into directories. For backups, this flag is all but mandatory
-v: Verbose. Basically, prints files and directories to the terminal as it runs through them as well as a summary at the end. If you're going to use automated scripts, you probably don't want this;.
-P: Prints a progress counter as it copies each file (displays progress for only that file, not the entire backup). You definitely don't want this for scripts, and I use it mainly to make sure things are running smoothly.
-h: Prints file sizes (progress bar and summary) in human-readable format.
/home/maples/documents/: The "source" directory. Note that (unlike most other programs) the trailing "/" at the end is important. I'm not sure what happens if you omit it on the "source", but see my note for the destination.
/mnt/backup-drive/: The "destination" directory. Again, the trailing "/" at the end is important. If you omit it, it will create a new directory in the destination for the backup, instead of backing up directly to the destination.
--delete: Deletes files in the destination that are no longer in the source.
-n: "Dry run." I use this every time, before I run the backup. Basically, (when used with -v) it prints out the files that it's going to copy, and delete. I use this to make sure that there's not a file that I wanted to keep an older version of, or that I edited on the external drive. Once you've looked over the output and decided that it's going to do what you want it to do, remove this flag and run it again to make it actually run the backup.

Thanks Jeremy. I've heard SpiderOak is even better with encryption.

maples, thanks, but not having a computer background I would be shaking in my boots to use something like this. Plus I don't have an external hard drive. The closest I come to backing things up is with a flash drive. I just get nervous thinking 'what if the flash drive craps out.'

I need something mega simple.

As others have posted rsync is a command line utility. It's strength is that it can sync two locations and only transfer the differences rather than complete files. That makes it a very efficient tool over slow connections. I believe there is also gui font end available called grsync. You should try that out, it might be "mega-simple".

The advantage of plain rsync is that you can easily automate periodic execution through cron, which is not so relevant for you since you want to backup to a flash drive at points in time you will be deciding manually. So you could try grsync I guess. Never used it myself though.

Deja dup, if I recall correctly, is python based and has an automatic archiving function. That means that you can go back to older versions of a file. The downside is that you need deja dup to recover the data, whereas backups created with (g)rsync can be accessed with a normal file browser. They are just normal copies of your data.

Again, all of this from the top of my head based on what I read coincidently a couple of days ago.

Thanks Joe. I don't know,though. I looked at grsync and at this point it doesn't look simple. I think I just need to relax and let the information come in. At this point Copy.com isn't looking so bad. I'm not all that concerned about the privacy issue but I am concerned about losing data with it.

It seems you just put all your file folders into the Copy Folder. Then it's all in the Copy cloud. Simple. You access your files from both computers in the same Copy folder (on either computer). But what if the Copy cloud crashes? That would be a nightmare.