Using Minds to backup your files
How to back up on Minds
Backing up your files regularily is very important. This is especially true if you are a final year student with a capstone project. At Minds we have done our best to make this easier for you. It requires a little setup at the start, but then it'll be simple to use for the rest of the year.
1: Download the necessary files.
This guide requires you to download 2 things, one is unison, a backup utility. The other is ssh , a program for secure connections over the internet. Click here to download unison. Save it to your desktop , or somewhere convenient. The click here to download the ssh files you need. Unzip ssh.zip into somewhere that is in your path e.g. C:\Winnt\System32\ for example. Ensure all 4 files are there.
2: Use SSH to makes yourself a Minds backup directory
Open up a command terminal. To do this Press Start->Run and type cmd. Type ssh -l USERNAME login.minds.may.ie. (e.g. ssh -l dez login.minds.nuim.ie ) If you get an error here, it means you didn't carry out step one correctly. If the errors are persisting, contact dtraynor_AT_cs.may.ie for a bit of help.
At this point (if all has gone well), enter your Minds password,then you simply have to make yourself a backup directory on Minds. To learn the basics of the minds (and linux in general) terminal, have a look here . If you just wanna get on with it, type the command mkdir backup. This will make a directory called backup. Leave this program running, so you can check back later.
3:Run the Unison program
Run unison, by double clicking on it. You should see this screen.
Select the folder that all your important work is contained in. This will probably be something like C:\Documents And Settings\UserName\ or C:\Project. It is good practice to keep all your work under one root directory.
4: Enter the connection details
The next dialog you will see will ask you where are you backing up to. Enter login.minds.nuim.ie as the Host. SSH as the protocol. Your Minds Username as the username and /home/minds/USERNAME/backup (or whatever you named your backup directory).
Click continue when you are done, an alternative window will ask for your minds password. Enter it.
5: Run the BackUp
After you see continue, you should see a warning dialog, something like this one...
Do not worry , as you will read , this is just informing you that it doesn't detect any previous files and that this must be the first time you have the program.
If everything has gone well, the next screen you will see will display the files that it will now be synchronising.
Click go to begin the backup. Note this will take a while the first time, but after that it will only backup the files that have changed(This is called an incremental backup).
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When it is finished click quit. You should run this program every night, or at least once a week. Every year in NUI Maynooth some poor student (one or more) will lose all their data due to a dodgy hard drive failure (In my year, a student lost absolutely everything 2 weeks before handup). Doing this sort of backup means such an event wouldn't even bother you.