Hello all,
After month of aggro and problems with the inherently unreliable and user unfriendly BT Cloud that many of you may also have experienced i decided not to give up on something i basically pay for as part of my internet price, but to persevere, go back to basics and have another go.
So i was previously using "Sync" probably without any need, as despite having both a work and a "home" laptop, all i really want is an online copy of both hard disks in the event of theft, loss, disk failure etc. so no need to sync files between machines via the cloud. Hence i thought i would try "backup" not "sync". Must be simpler and more reliable he assumed naively....
Question is, what can backup actually cope with in terms of making and then maintaining a copy of your selected local client folders? i assumed, maybe naively, that if i add, update or delete files it would handle all 3 changes and keep a server "mirror" copy of my local folders. Having done a bit of experimenting i am far from convinced it can do all three.
So please tell me, based on your experience, do you think that the BT Cloud "backup" functionality (NOT Sync) can cope with these three scenarios:
(1) I add a new file to a local client PC folder that is tagged to be backed up, that folder having previously been backed up. I expect to see that file appear on the server copy within a few minutes / seconds of adding it so long at BT Cloud is active.
(2) i delete an existing file from a local client PC folder. I expect to see it disappear from the online server copy too.
(3) i update a document saved in the local client PC folder, i expect to see the same updates passed to the online server copy within a few minutes.
My experiment tonight, unless i am misunderstanding and/or doing something wrong, say that BT Cloud is fine with (1), if it spots a new file it will add it to your server backup, usually almost straight away. A good start then....!
It does not appear to deal with scenario (2), if i delete a file from my local client it stays on the server, which means that if, heaven forbid, i actually ever need to restore folders from my BT Cloud backup, i would get not only all the live file i wanted, but all the old ones since the dawn of time that i have deleted. That's what i call a "right side" failure, and i could live with it. Really i would expect there should be an option in the settings like "remove deleted files", but alas, can't see one, so hey ho, who cares.
The one that really disappoints me, and where i wonder if i am either expecting too much or misunderstanding the intended functionality, is #3, where a previously backed up file, is UPDATED and re-saved on the local client. Imagine a document saved in draft one night, updated and finished the next night. BT Cloud does not appear to be able to refresh the server copy with the updated client copy.
So at 6pm tonight i created 3 x new documents locally in a backed up directory, all immediately appeared on the server copy. I then updated all three, one excel ,one word and one powerpoint. Cloud says it is updating, spending ages telling you this, far longer than it took to create several GB worth of backup in the first place, then claims "All in sync". The file on the server copy remains the original versions first created, and show no signs of updates to their date and time stamps, or their contents. Rubbish. Useful as a backup for a work environment, maybe OK if all you want to do is your photo and video library where files are rarely edited...
What can people advise based on their own experience please?
Pretty surely sync could "get it's head" around file updates if it can share files between PCs, so why can "Backup" as well? It seems it just compares lists of file names, ignores date and time stamps, and only adds, never takes away...
Might be time to pay for a proper backup product like DropBox unless anyone has other reccommendations...
Thanks in advance for any help.
