Backup Monitoring

Help and Support
1

Hi there,

I am looking at using rclone to back up files from a Windows computer to a SaaS platform.

I am still deciding whether to use a one-way copy or a sync.

Are there any tools, scripts, or features included with rclone that can monitor the process and alert me if the backup stops working or encounters errors?

I also noticed there is a beta GUI of version rclone.

Does this provide any additional information or monitoring that would help confirm that everything is working as expected?

Thank you and I apologize if this is the wrong forum.

2

welcome to the forum,

as with most software, rclone will emit an exit code
https://rclone.org/docs/#exit-code

rclone is not a real backup program. rclone is a fancy file copier.

if your windows OS is corrupted and will not boot, nothing rclone can do about that.
i suggest that you use acronis true image or veeam agent to backup the entire computer.

for simple file copying, use rclone
however, if a file is in-use or locked by an application, rclone cannot copy that.
i have a howto guide about creating VSS snapshots and using that as the source for rclone, restic, for any programs

by default, rclone only copies the latest version of a file. cannot do an incremental backup.
afiak, this is the best rclone can do

@for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%i in ('wmic os get localdatetime /format:list') do @set dt=%%i
@set datetime=%dt:~0,4%%dt:~4,2%%dt:~6,2%.%dt:~8,2%%dt:~10,2%%dt:~12,2%
rclone sync c:\path\to\source remote:current --bakup-dir=remote:archive\%datetime%

it was experimental from the day it was released, and rarely used at all based on forum posts.
now, the GUI is claimed to be a beta but i do not believe that.

if you need a GUI, use acronis true image. they offer a free 30 day trial
i have been using daily for 10+ years, on multiple machines.

3

Hi @asdffdsa

Thank you for this. It will only be document files, etc., from a separate drive rather than the OS drive, so nothing related to the OS.

My goal is to have a script running in the background that automatically picks up any new files or folders and uploads them to the cloud.

However, I’d also like something that shows me which files are still waiting to be uploaded, along with the upload progress and any errors.

4

run rclone using task scheduler on a schedule.

try --progress
and rclone sync, which can produce text files using the logger flags.

5

I have this set to a copy for now. All i can see is what it is currently copying, which is 4 files, and not what files are left to copy.

"C:\rclone-v1.75.0-windows-amd64\rclone.exe" copy G:\ Copy-drive:Gdrive-Synctest --progress --exclude "$RECYCLE.BIN/" --exclude "System Volume Information/"

6

afiak, rclone will not show that.
for a better estimate of the total time to finish, try --check-first

7

I agree with asdffdsa that rclone is not a backup-program.
What you are looking for is software like Restic or Borg Backup.
For Restic there's also a dedicated module in rclone to serve a cloud-storage-backend as Restic-compatible-storage: rclone serve restic

Yes you can fiddle something together with rclone that serves superficially the same purpose as a dedicated backup tool but rclone sync makes the destination an exact copy of the source right now. It deletes anything at the destination that isn't in the source. That's mirroring, not backup.
With a dedicated backup-tool like Restic you get versioning and point-in-time-restores and deduplication.
And there is multiple GUI-options available for Restic. From Desktop to Web, even apps for Android and iOS exist.

PS.: If you are managing multiple machines programmatically i would strongly recommend Borg Backup tho, but it needs a dedicated machine that runs borg backup as server and connects through SSH not through rclone.

8

Thank you for this. I have scripted something with rclone. I will look into restic for anything future, it looks like more of a learning curve and i have a quick deadline.