Comments on: How to Set Up The World’s Simplest Version Control & Backup System (Takes Like 5 Minutes)

By: Tuomas

Tuomas — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:27:59 +0000

It’s nice hack, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. Versioning control is so fundamentally useful in any project regardless of scope or team size…

By: Juuso

Juuso — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:40:40 +0000

Yep. Nicely. Very nicely.

By: Pathogen David

Pathogen David — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:15:33 +0000

Testing.. does this comment thing work?

By: Juuso

Juuso — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:36:10 +0000

Testing.. does this comment thing work?

By: Lorenzo

Lorenzo — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:05:21 +0000

Brilliant just found this today. I’ve been backing up with Idrive and thumb drives, this approach will work perfectly on my non networked machine. I was going to install SVN, I may still but at least I’ll have something while I’m learning the ins and outs of SVN.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:37:07 +0000

Setting up version control is not so difficult, really… And it covers much more than just backing up your project’s folder.

Just as an example: what if you have large files that never change (say, a 3d model). This mechanism would copy it over and over again…

This technique may be useful for VERY small projects, but I wouldn’t say it’s a good idea in general.

By: DtD Software

DtD Software — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:48:26 +0000

In Windows XP Pro (Not sure about Home or Vista) you can set folders to be compressed automatically.

If you right-click a folder and hit properties.
Then click advanced
There are check boxes for Compress and Encrypt, if you check compress it compresses it.

How much does it compress it? No idea, but I used it for my videos and backup folders.

–

Also, you could use the command line tool WinSCP.com that comes with WinSCP (http://www.winscp.net/) to syncronize your backups with remote servers.

~DtD

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:13:01 +0000

Personally, I am a big fan of FileHamster http://www.mogware.com/filehamster/index.html. After installing the notes, diff and zip plugins, it just backs up anything I tell it to, zips it and is ready to go anytime I need it with very little work to be done by me.

By: Lorezo Gatti

Lorezo Gatti — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:46:12 +0000

If you want to archive revisions blindly and automatically, there is a better option than xcopy or rsync.
If you use Git (or, I presume, Mercurial in very similar ways) with automatically generated commit comments:
- the pile of revisions is even more compact than if you take advantage of hard links;
- it’s highly portable;
- it’s very unlikely to corrupt copies in case it’s interrupted;
- you can make “real” commits with edited comments from time to time;
- you can easily use both local repositories for fast operation and remote repositories for backup and sharing;
- you can access your fellow developers’ repositories and merge anything you need;
- you have an actual VCS at your disposal when you want to look back at earlier revisions;
- you can transition smoothly from a mere backup to mature version control practices in general.

Moreover, Git is so fast that it might make sense to link the backup script to run before the compilation command rather than using a fixed schedule.

By: Juuso Hietalahti

Juuso Hietalahti — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:12:27 +0000

well, it’s pretty much the same as with normal “copy paste”: I suppose file gets copied? (try editing for example some file manually when copy pasting it somewhere else to see what happens)… so I doubt there’s a problem even if you are compiling/changing/whatnot files and backing them up simultaneously.

Since the version control “pops up”, you can notice when it’s copying stuff – and can launch it manually too… (if you happen to worry a failure).