How to Backup Sites

[scarletts]

Hello,

I am trying to backup my site to my home computer.

But the site has user uploaded images and total directory size reaches to 5GB. I tried to download root folder by FTP software but it has been 3 days and it is still downloading. There have been also many connection timeouts which makes me think the backup might be broken.

I have SSH access to server. I thought to ZIP compress the root folder on server side and download the archive file instead.

Do you recommend backing up the site by compressing and downloading the archive file? I have some concerns that the file permissions or other file attributes may change when I compress the whole site.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks

[aaronbrad]

yes you can either use tar command with flag "p" or rsync command with -a flag. Either command will preserve permissions. I would suggest to use tar command and compress the folder and then download.

[weddingsparkler]

Log into your cPanel control panel. Click on the "Backup" icon. Select "Generate / Download a Full Backup". Select "Home Directory" in "Backup Destination" and enter your email address, before clicking the "Generate Backup" button.

[RH-Calvin]

You can ask your hosting provider for a weekly or monthly backup plans for your server. They usually provide it free upto a certain limit.

[ikoula]

Hello,

The issue with making an archive is that will eat cpu, if you can't afford to go for external backup the best is to rsynch data to another server.

While you are thinking about how to manage it you can at least download your site through FTP excluding photo folder, it will be incomplete backup but at least you'll save the website's code.

[Shay_Fox]

Thanks for sharing the information.

[alicemaris558]

You can back up your site via following ways and ask to your hosting services provider for back up services :
1. Manual backups
2. cPanel backups
3. Rsync backup
4. Backing up to the cloud