Backing up your data?

[jasonthelamb]

I was wondering if there was a good automated way to do this? I have dropbox and OneDrive, but it seems like I have to actually copy/paste the Fantasy Grounds folder every time I want to do that... is there a way to automate this, so that any time a file updates it will know to update the cloud storage?

[Zacchaeus]

I was wondering if there was a good automated way to do this? I have dropbox and OneDrive, but it seems like I have to actually copy/paste the Fantasy Grounds folder every time I want to do that... is there a way to automate this, so that any time a file updates it will know to update the cloud storage?

Yes, but never back up your files to a cloud storage 'solution' since you will end up with synchronisation problems. Back up to a pen drive or external hard drive or whatever.

Depending on what OS you are using to can automate back ups.

[Nylanfs]

What you could do is setup a batch file to run right next to your FG icon that manually copies the campaign folder to your sync folder of choice.

Alternately something like this can be used to setup a schedule to do this. https://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/

[Moon Wizard]

I use a nightly mirror to an external drive, as well as BackBlaze for cloud backup. BackBlaze does mirroring with versioning. I do not use any synch solutions (on purpose).

Regards,
JPG

[Ken L]

I cheat and use a git sync.

"But git's for code!"

It's ma server and I do what I wanna.

[llothos]

I was wondering if there was a good automated way to do this? I have dropbox and OneDrive, but it seems like I have to actually copy/paste the Fantasy Grounds folder every time I want to do that... is there a way to automate this, so that any time a file updates it will know to update the cloud storage?

From what I can see in the settings you can change the data folder. I've personally changed it to a dropbox folder and on my other computer I've done the same thing.

The updates worked fine. I created a pc on one for example and then I gave it a few minutes to transfer and the updates were there. The only issue i could forsee is if you tried to use the program at the same time on two different machines and be attempting to do the same thing.

But this would be a good solution to say doing your updates on your desktop then bringing the laptop to the game (if you were using this at a local session).

Dropbox also has the automated history for 30 days so if you ever need to restore a previous version you can.

I'm going to play around with it now myself and see how it reacts when I have two open. I'm relatively new to fg but when a player connects to a game I'm assuming that the files are all on the hosts machine with the exception of maybe the character sheet or once it's added to campaign would that just be stored on hosts machine from then on?

[jasonthelamb]

Thank you everyone - after searching around I found a program to let it automatically back up!

[llothos]

Thank you everyone - after searching around I found a program to let it automatically back up!

For everyone else's benefit what did you find so if someone else has this question in the future they will know their options.☺

[jasonthelamb]

The program is called "Boxifier" - easy to find with a google search!

[Trenloe]

From what I can see in the settings you can change the data folder. I've personally changed it to a dropbox folder and on my other computer I've done the same thing.
We don't recommend doing this at all with your FG live data. There have been reports of sync applications like dropbox corrupting the FG database and users losing their data.

Do an offline backup, don't point DropBox (or other sync applications) at your live FG data. It might work for a while, but sooner or later you're going to have an issue...

[jasonthelamb]

We don't recommend doing this at all with your FG live data. There have been reports of sync applications like dropbox corrupting the FG database and users losing their data.

Do an offline backup, don't point DropBox (or other sync applications) at your live FG data. It might work for a while, but sooner or later you're going to have an issue...

The program I've found makes a copy of your data and puts it into Dropbox, it doesn't link your FG folder directly to DropBox

[Trenloe]

The program I've found makes a copy of your data and puts it into Dropbox, it doesn't link your FG folder directly to DropBox
Are you sure?

See the second point on the Boxifier FAQ: https://www.boxifier.com/faq/

[llothos]

I've used a program in the past called free file sync and it can compare files and tell you what's different. They also have a real time sync that could be configured.

That boxifier seems like a symbolic linking program which I've heard dropbox and others don't work well either and it didn't always update right away and requires restart but I've never played with it.


Edit... I've played around with the free file sync and it seems to work OK.

[PopinFRESH]

Hey guys & gals
I'm in the process of upgrading my computer and before I reinstall a new OS, I wanted to make sure I backed up everything properly so that I can restore the campaign I'm running once I've completed the OS Install. I searched around the forum a bit and this seems like the closest thread I could find on the subject, however, it seems the OP was trying to automate backups / sync their data folder to something like dropbox. Here is some information about my setup and what I think I need to do to backup and restore the campaign I'm currently running.

Fantasy Grounds Ultimate via Steam Installer
All 5E Content via Steam
Defalut installation locations: Data folder is $USER\AppData\Roaming\Fantasy Grounds
DeluxOz's Base & Locations extensions


1) Open the campaign and use /save in the chat to ensure everything is saved
2) Close out of program completely
3) Copy the Fantasy Grounds data folder to my flash drive
4) Install clean OS
5) Install Steam
6) Install Fantasy Grounds via Steam Installer
7) Run Fantasy Grounds Updater to download and install all purchased content
8) Install DeluxOz's Base & Locations extensions
9) Copy over the Fantasy Grounds data folder from my flash drive back to my installation

The last part is what I'm most unclear on, If I just need to copy over the campaign in question to the new campaigns folder, or if I just copy everything from the backup of $USER\AppData\Roaming\Fantasy Grounds back into the new $USER\AppData\Roaming\Fantasy Grounds folder? Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

-PopinFRESH

[damned]

YOUR data location can be found from the FG splash screen by using the Explorer Icon.
On your new system this location may be different.

Either copy the entire folder or choose campaigns, extensions, modules, portraits, rulesets, tokens and copy these. For most people campaigns is the critical one. If you do extension, ruleset or content development then some of these folders might be more important.

In most cases that should be all you need. If you copy this to your new install you wont need to download the extensions as they will be in this data copy described above.

Make 2 backups on to 2 different pieces of media too!