The popular web hosting company Dreamhost recently decided to change a policy they had in place that didn’t allow customers to use their storage space to backup files. Now you’re given 50GB of storage space to use as backup. This change in policy does come with one caveat - the backups aren’t backed up. So if for whatever reason the Dreamhost backup server that stores your files happens to die, your files die with it. So while you probably don’t want to make it your primary backup solution, it’s still a nice feature (since you’re already paying for web hosting). This tutorial will guide you through using mathusalem (free backup software) to automatically FTP the files you want to backup to Dreamhost.
In truth, this tutorial could also be called “How to backup files using mathusalem” - because that’s essentially what it is. I just happen to use Dreamhost as the remote server to backup the files to. Mathusalem also supports backing up to local drives, iDisk, WebDAV, AFP, SMB, FTP, SFTP or Amazon S3 - this example happens to use FTP.
- First you’ll need to enable your Dreamhost account to allow for backups. Head over to https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=users.backup and select FTP access only (you can always change this to SFTP later). Enter a password for your backup account, and then click the Activate Backup User! button.
- Your account will be created. Make note of your user name and server name. You’ll need them in a few moments.
- Head over to the mathusalem page and download a copy. Unzip the file and double-click the .prefPane to install it. After it’s installed as a System Preference, it will automatically open.
Click the Create New Backup button.
- A whole slew of settings and options will appear. Don’t be intimidated, we’ll get to all of them in due time.
- Start by giving your backup a name. Double-click the default name and enter something descriptive. Since I’m going to backup all my pictures to Dreamhost, I named mine Photos. Click the Choose… button in the Source: section.
- Navigate to the folder you want to back up, select it, and click Open.
- Select FTP Server from the Type: drop-down list.
- Now enter the Host (server name), User Name and Password in the appropriate fields.
- Click the Schedule tab. For our first backup we’ll run it manually, but for ongoing backups, this is the place you’ll want to define them. There are enough options that you’re bound to find one that meets your needs.
- Now click the Advanced Settings tab. From here you can specify a number of options.
- Hover your cursor over any of the options/settings and a more descriptive pop-up will appear.
- Return to the Source & Destination tab. Click the Save Backup button first, then click Run Backup Now….
- Mathusalem (by default) creates disk images (.DMG files) as your backups. This means that for every megabyte (or gigabyte) that you want to back up, you have to have that much free space on your drive (for the .dmg to be created).
- Once the .dmg has been created, it will be uploaded.
- Once you’ve made changes to your backup folder (added more files, removed files etc), and you run a backup again, you can use the History & Restore tab to see which files are backed up, and when. Files highlighted in red are “new” to that backup set.
- If you opt to run backups automatically, you’ll probably want to return to the Advanced Settings section, and place a check in the Don’t Ask For Confirmation on Start. Otherwise, each time a backup starts (and you’ll probably want to schedule them for the middle of the night, when you’re not using your Mac) - you’ll be prompted to confirm the backup process.
- That’s pretty much it. You can experiment with the settings (particularly the compression settings if you want to squeeze every spare megabyte possible on your storage server). If you have any questions, by all means feel free to leave them in the comments.
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Thanks for the write-up! I see in the screen-shot you can password protect your disk-images as well. Bonus.
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