I would like to be able to backup my entire site, but with a net connection that maxes out at around 20kbps there's no way I can download everything.

If I sign up for a hosting account at another company would I be able to somehow transfer all the files between the two servers directly? Is it hard? (I don't know how it is done.)

Would this be a smart thing to do or is there a better way?

Thanks.

Yes, it would normally be possible to transfer files directly between the two systems provided that you have telnet access to the second system.

Most (all?) *nix systems have a command line ftp client available from the shell - normally started by typing "ftp".

There are plenty of tutorials on using command line ftp floating around on the web, like this one http://unix.about.com/library/weekly/aa121800a.htm (warning pop-up ads).

It might also be possible to write scripts to automate such backups using perl or python for example.

Would this be a smart thing to do or is there a better way? hey, i'm not sure - certainly advisable to have a backup by some means - maybe others will comment

wombat

if you want to pay the price for another hosting account. If not, just download it over night.

Its also a very good chance that your host is backing up your site once a week if not nightly.

Its also a very good chance that your host is backing up your site once a week if not nightly.yes, but is it a good idea to rely on this completely? what if the company suddenly goes broke and/or support evaporates?

wombat

G'day,

It is a good idea that you do back up your site to another account or so even to another provider would be better while using diffrent name servers for your domain name!

This will give you back up and also at the same time keep your site up more frequently (assuming the second host has a diffrent bandwidth provider than the first)

Proper companies that do offer back up are normaly trustworthy cause its just part of the cron jobs set on there servers...
not needing to say that there are some that offer it but dont actually go through with it...

But hardware is hardware it can fail at anytime, harddrives are sometimes good last for years to come and sometimes they fail after a week. That can be a back up hard drive or the primary hard drive!

Enough technical talk, if you can afford two accounts do it if your website back up is this important!

Dont take any offence to the subject line above...

Kind regards,

If you did incremental backups where you only backed up the files that changed every night, it wouldn't take very long every night, just the first night.

Unless you have a lot of changes.