How do you guys deal with backup?

Hi everyone,

Just recently did I get into Unity & C# development and so far I have found it to be a great experience. One thing one my mind, however, is what happens to my projects and code should my computer crash. How do you guys deal with this?

I guess it's mostly the code that I'm worried about but those scripts are automatically added to the location that Unity specifies. To move everything of that location (prefabs, scenes, etc.) to a cloud service like OneDrive or iCloud would surely mean that it gets filled up quite fast, and the fact that it is online (rather than on your PC) means that everything runs slower as well. How do you guys handle your Unity backup?

Regards

 

Take a look at these:
https://github.com
https://bitbucket.org

 

I keep the project on my local machine while having two backups: one on a separate local drive, and another on a cloud storage (OneDrive).

I also use GitLab for source control.

 

I use version control for anything important. It looks intimidating at first, but its actually really easy.

 

Honestly, if you plan on making more than 2 projects ever you're best implementing an automated VC setup process.

 

I store my code and data separately using 2 different source control servers (Perforce/Helix for code and Visual SVN for data), in the event that one starts to outgrow the other. They are both run from a USB stick attached to my home computer that I can remotely access on a laptop. I make backups of both source control servers every month or so, or after I've made significant changes to my project. I used to store the backups on DVDs, but I'm soon going to transition to either more USB sticks or external hard drives, because the optical media will be expiring soon. As far as the sizes of my project(s), I've used my Perforce server since 2005, and it's less than 3 GB total. If I obliterated some of my old Battlefield 2 mods, it would probably be less than 2 GB total. My Visual SVN server is newer, probably since 2012, and it's currently less than 1GB. This will obviously be different from your own needs, but it's always good to be aware of the large files you are checking into your source control, especially if you plan on editing them frequently. For example, video editing can eat up a lot of disk space. If you make frequent video edits and want to use source control, do your due diligence and find an appropriate source control solution. Textures, models, and audio clips can easily eat up disk space also. Code is probably the least critical file type to worry about, as source control deals with text files the most easily, and with the least impact to your disk space.

EDIT:
By source control, I mean the same thing as version control

 

Five second run down on how to do this? I still do mine manually...

 

I'm away from my PC at the moment, but basically, you can run everything git through bash, so I just set up a shell script that takes a few inputs, creates the project for me, pushes everything to my private server for me. Really all I ever enter is my username, password, and a file path.

 

I'd also add Azure Devops to that list, as their private repos are "unlimited". Previously known as Visual Studio Online.

I log into visualstudio.com, click "Create new project" and give it a name, then I click "Repos" and copy-paste the repo URL into my Git client. If you use the Git client built into Visual Studio itself I don't think you even need to copy-paste.

Many hosting services will have a similarly simple interface.

The audience for whom this would be considered easy and/or accessible is quite niche.

 

I pay 10 bucks per month for PlasticSCM. I have it installed on my second PC (which i treat as a low powered local server). So everytime i submit my changes to PlasticSCM, it gets stored on my server. From there it is also uploaded to their cloud. Every few hours BeyondCompare runs on my server to copy any changes to my NAS (which uses Raid 6, so 2 HDD's can meet the maker and i still loose nothing). Every other day i copy the contents of the NAS to an external drive that is then taken offline and stored in another building.

You may call me crazy, but thats how it goes

PS: I was using Perforce before, but i find PlasticSCM nicer to work with. Just personal preference.

 

Github + project folders symbolically linked inside DropBox folder + automatic sync of folder to a local RAID.

 

If the audience of game developers who can figure out how to write a shell script is niche, I am actually a little concerned!

 

Sure, but there's also a pretty broad spectrum between "can figure out" and "prefers it over clicking 2 buttons".

 

It takes more than clicking two buttons to set up a git repo that's actually set up to accept a unity project and you only really have to do it once.

 

Thanks guys. I guess I will use Github and maybe Box or Dropbox to copy the Projects

 

I just put my entire project in my dropbox and work out of it. Yes, probably bad. But it works.

 

– I use TimeMachine for local backups (if I really f*cked up something then I just restore an older version from TimeMachine)

– Arq for encrypted online backups. Arq (for Mac/Windows) works a lot like TimeMachine just with much better options like many different types of backup destinations. A few years ago I’ve searched several weeks for the best solution and Arq really beats them all hands down. https://www.arqbackup.com

– Additionally I have a worst case EMP-proof backup which I create manually from time to time (I know this sounds paranoid).

 

I host my own SVN server at home. On smaller projects I sometimes just zip up the entire project folder and copy it over to a small NAS. The zip file method starts getting frustratingly slow for larger projects though.

 

Sue, but it includes me. So its an important niche audience.

 

You have to be careful with this because dropbox has been known to eat projects if you try to access them from multiple systems at once. We've had multiple threads on this in the past but people keep doing it.

 

I'm adding my support to VC systems. I'm using Git/SourceTree to an external SSD. All I have to do is Commit/Push, and everything is backed up. Works like a charm.

 

Another option is GitLab.com which allows for up to 10GB per private repository for free, without requring Git-LFS if you want to forestall that or have a reasonable amount of changing binaries in your project (Github and Bitbucket charge for above 1GB and require Git-LFS be installed). Gitlab also has a great user interface for learning git project management.

For larger projects, I second the recommendation for Azure Devops Repos, as beyond the limitless Git-LFS storage aspect, Azure Repos offers an excellent browser interface (with a dark mode theme), four different styles of project management tools, a wiki and a plugin for integration with Visual Studio Code.

One note for Bitbucket is that if you already use Trello or plan to, the two systems are deeply integrated. And $10/mo for 100GB of Git-LFS storage is a fair price for a relatively simple way to manage large Unity projects. Plus Atlassian has the best documentation for learning git in my opinion, whether one uses Bitbucket or not.

Github is $5/mo for 50GB of Git-LFS while unlimited private repos are now free.

 

Yes, it can be a problem. I have to make sure for example, my project is fully upload on my Windows laptop before I try to work on it on my Mac. Because if it isn't then I end up with multiple versions of things.

But on the whole, it's saved my bacon a few times. But it is costing me about £100 a year in dropbox subscriptions.

 

I use Git on Azure Devops. Most of the time it works great but for some reason I end up breaking it every now and then.

 

My backup procedure involves

Spoiler: spoiler

waking up in the morning turning on my mac and hoping to god the hard drive hasn't failed or an update hasn't corrupted anything!

 

Really? But they say Time Machine is better than anything else on the globe in terms of backup. Why you wouldn't use it? Slice bread and whatnot.

 

I like living on the edge . . . I guess.

This reminds me, I most definitely need to do a backup today, or I could say a little prayer.

 

Github private repos are free now too. Just dropping that here for anyone who might not know that because it was a relatively recent change.

I had free private repos before the change due to the fact that I was a college student. Once I graduated, I was thinking that I had to either pay for Github now or switch to something else but as soon as my free ride ran out, Github announced free private repos.

 

wtf is happening to the world. Apparently source control is more intimidating than game dev.

unity what have you done...