How can I back up the Documents folder on my Macbook?

Question

I don't want to use Dropbox because I don't want to sync a separate folder - I just want to sync the Documents folder that already exists in ~/Zachary/Documents. Any tool recommendations? Ideally something that's "set, click, forget". Happy to pay. Amazon S3 storage ideal. Don't like Backupify - don't want them to have my data :)

Answer 1

You can sync folders outside your Dropbox - simply create a symbolic link to that file/folder in the Dropbox.

To do this, open a terminal, and run the following command:

ln -s ~/Documents ~/Dropbox/DocumentsBackup

This will make Dropbox think that your documents folder is "in" it, causing it to be synced. If you're using Dropbox on multiple computers, you can also run the reverse command (i.e. ln -s ~/Dropbox/DocumentsBackup ~/Documents after deleting ~/Documents) to make the synced Dropbox folder appear to be outside it, allowing you to have one copy of your documents folder in the correct location on two computers.

Dropbox link to a couple of utilities to do this automatically here.