glad that we could help you.
@thestigma, i suggest that you break the script into two parts.
- the main file without the set variables.
- a small file that has the set variables and calls the main script
Not hard to do, but I'm not sure I see the benefit of breaking it up into parts for non-technical users as it just creates more potential for confusion. What is your goal with this? I need to understand the motivation.
well,
if the OP has 10 scripts in use and we find more bugs and/or want to add additional features, you will need to create a new script.
then the non-techincal person would have to edit all 10 scripts and that is beyond most simple users.
having one file for each set of variables is much easier for the non-techincal to deal with.
the script is good and does most of what any simple user needs.
a simple wiki can make it available to others and can be explained in a few lines of text.
Just throwing this out there, but couldn't you create a script that, uses the gist of the code, yet the end user would never see, hidden behind a script generating GUI, where the user simply puts in what they want backed up, where do you want it backed up to, what time would you like this backup to happen, where would you like the log files stored on your local machine, etc. I mean a total of 4 variables, that a noob could pop in to the program, and generate their own script, with a scheduled windows task, throw in rclone in the directory of the script, so it doesn't even have to depend on the end user doing more than copying the files to their hard drive or USB flash drive. If you did that, making the "engine" doing the work behind the scenes, the code wouldn't really need to be separated for any reason. It wouldn't be something the user interacted with at all. User sees GUI, pops in their info, script is generated in the background, rclone invoked from the local directory that the script resides in, scripts stored in a script folder, windows task scheduler used to schedule the task. Just an idea. This way, it would be much more universal, and you could generate as many random backups, at random times, as you wished on multiple drives, etc, easily and efficiently.
I mean - I could make a text-based GUI that does this - dumps out a config file and then uses that to launch the script.
But I question if it is really much easier to operate then just putting the same values into the settings of the script.
I suppose it would make it easier to manage and maintain in cases where the user needs multiple different configuration though.
I will take it under advisement and look into it when I'm feeling a little better.
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it is a nice idea but, task scheduler already have a GUI.
there are many dozens of options, including complex options like which user to run the script as, and setting time and date.
we would be re-creating a complex GUI and the end-user would have to navigate.
in the end, the end-user will have to deal with a GUI.
no point in re-creating a GUI when we can use the GUI of the OS itself.
the amount of source code needed to would be 1,000+ lines just to script task scheduler.
and just imagine, all the testing and debugging that would be needed.
perhaps the script could open the task scheduler and pre-populate some of the info like the name of script
I definitely agree on the scheduling part. I'm not messing with that when cron and task scheduler already does this exact thing much better than I ever could.
Having a function that can make it easier to type in the script-parameters and give you an instance-file that you then run would be quite doable though. I'm just not convinced it adds much. introducing another layer of abstraction and making the whole thing more complex and prone to malfunction just to "simplify" inputting 7 one-liner settings seems like asking for trouble honestly.
I agree. I've used the task scheduler for these jobs before, with success.
If you wanted to make a actual pay program, you'd have to put in the baby steps, and a little more polish and automation. That was all I was saying. Radio buttons for the flag options, such as that. As it is, the program works and scheduling the task works. I was just thinking more along the lines of an actual "noob" ready program that you could pay for, to automate away all of the cobbling together your own backup thing.
Thanks for the link, that has been removed...
I was thinking more along the lines of you guys making money and selling a program that could answer the rclone issues, with an easy to use, and easy to understand interface, that most solutions do not have.
Aka, trying to make you, make you some money. 
I have paid for Imperius Backup, and I have, as of yet, to get it to actually work to backup my VMware ESXI machine. It won't use or recognize my rclone "drives" or mount points, etc. So, it was like pissing 200 bucks to the wind. The script works, it just needs a little spit and polish to make it ready for prime time.
if you paid for Imperius and it can backup to the cloud, why use rclone?
if you want to use rclone, not a good idea to backup large amounts of data to rclone drives/mounts.
Thank you for the suggestion, but I think that is a little outside the scope of what I was trying to do here.
I made that script just for you basically (although if others find it helpful too that's great)
It's not nearly robust enough to call a "product" 
Besides, I don't want to make money on something so basic off of rclone. If I ever made something like that I'd do it as a service to the community.
I don't think I am likely to make a GUI for this as it would be more work than making the script itself.
The most I would be likely to ever do on this is maybe some kind of text-based menu.
I am just hesitant to do that as long as the only purpose would be to basically input the data that you can already insert in the "settings" portion of the script. I don't think that will the hurdle for newbies - but rather just general confusion about the basics of how rclone works.
Do you feel that it would help with more elaborate documentation for each setting perhaps?
If you feel like any particular functionality is missing however, feel free to voice your suggestions.
I don't mind improving this for the benefit of the community.
I have zero experience with Imperious backup, but this particular thing might be due to an issue in where drives mounted in user-mode are not visible to applications running under the system account.
If that program does something along those lines - that might be it, and could be fixable fairly easily.
Or it may just be how Imperious works (not considering mounted drives in general). I can't know as I don't know the program as I said
Honestly, I have pretty much zero experience with Imperius backup as well.
All I know, is that it doesn't support team drives, which was the reason I came here to start with...aka to backup to team drives, not my 10 dollar a month business account via google, but my shared team drives, which I now have about 80 of. I have the snapshot option set in Esxi, so Imp goes...nope, can't back that up. It only wants to do backups to a locally mounted drive, which would mean that I'd have to install it directly on the server, which I don't personally want to do because the VM only has 4 gigs of ram as it is, and I don't want to overburden it with a ton of i/o ops. I haven't played much with Veeam, to be honest, and it may have some features I need. I just don't know if I have to dedicate a box to it, in order to get it to work properly, or a vm.
As far as my suggestions about automatically creating a script, via a simple gui, dos or otherwise, it's just that, a suggestion. I just think it would make things somewhat easier.
Lazy and simple are always much harder to program than obscure and "funkwidit" code. Both can and do work fine. One takes more work, to create less work in the future. The other, well, if you funk with it long enough, you can get it to work.
I do have a rather odd question / request.
Is there a way to exclude part of a backup directory in the rclone backup process?
I have a synology, and I am trying to backup the whole thing. The catch, is the #recycle_bin directory which, by design, isn't meant to be monkeyed with.
So, can I brute force it to copy, via rclone, or can I simply exclude it?
I'm going to add my account in to the admin's section in the Synology, to see if that works, so it might just be a fool's errand for now... but it could come in handy in the future, to know how to exclude folders from a drive backup in rclone, and since you guys are the gurus of rclone, why not ask a "stupid question" now and get it out of the way, instead of hitting a brick wall somewhere later in the future?
The only stupid question is the one you're never brave enough to ask, right?
It can backup to Google File Stream drives, but not google team drives. I messaged them about this, and they have no real desire to implement it into their product.
The whole purpose of this thread, was to create a solution that would, in fact, backup to google team drives, not just the paid options. Storing a TB of data on AWS or Microsoft is "serious money" for most small businesses. 305 dollars a month, roughly, on Amazon. That is insane.
https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
I wanted something, to give me some cloud redundancy, without having to offer up my first born and 300 - 600 a month to store my files up in the cloud.
Even backup companies like backblaze, although more economical, it was going to take me 5 years to load a complete backup of my system on it.
Five, freaking, years.
I decided it was easier to just use a VPS and a seedbox, and download my crap, directly to my Google File Sync drive. 11 Tb's is what I am sitting at, with the stuff from Archive.org, all my OS images, etc.
So, there's reason for my madness.
You sure can! In fact you have a wealth of filtering options to choose from:
https://rclone.org/filtering/
To do specifically what you outlines you would only need to use --exclude #recycle (assuming that this is the exact name of the folder).
This is only scratching the surface of the possibilities in filtering, so you can pretty much achieve any level of control you want with that (although the syntax can be hard to learn at first - so feel free to ask for examples). For now you can just add that flag to your "flags" setting in the script.
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- the synology box can back itself up to the cloud.
- the synology box can back up vmware virtual machines,
https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/active_backup_business#virtual_machine
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Nice. I saw the word business, and instantly assumed financial sodomy would be mandatory. It's nice they have a free option.
Thanks for the tips guys and gals.
So far, so good.
Just my luck, the Synology I got, doesn't support it.
arrg.