Reliability of non-real time automatic backup? Dropbox, Google Drive, Git

Hi

Thank you all Logseq contributors, this is an amazing project.

I’m trying to gauge the state of play with non-real time automatic backups.
Whilst really I need real time sync eventually (~Roam). For now basic auto Git or Dropbox style backups is fine.

  1. What are the most reliable approaches?

  2. Do these work reliably without data loss?

  3. Do Dropbox and Google Drive work well?
    I want to introduce less technical users to Logseq.

Thanks : )

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I personally use Google Drive and Syncthing and they have worked well for me so far.

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Since 0.4.4 Syncthing has been working flawlessly for me. Logseq even updates its view in real time as local files are synced from another device. Privacy-wise this is also a great solution.

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I was unable to keep my notes on Dropbox (which worked fine for Obsidian). Apparently, Dropbox encodes accented filenames in a way which Logseq can’t handle.

If you don’t use accented characters, you should be fine.

I’m using iCloud Drive now, and syncing itself seems to be OK. However, I just noticed that a few journal files went missing, although their entries still appeared on Logseq.

As for Git, I think that Logseq’s auto-commit is still buggy, and got a lot of Git warnings and issues. I had to start the repository from scratch many times.

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The Google Drive app for your PC works very well with Logseq, and there are different ways to set this up. It allows you to have two settings:

  • Stream files (all files stay in the cloud, you can work with them as if they are local files when online)
  • Mirror files (files are stored in the cloud and on your computer)

What works for me:

  1. I have ‘stream files’ as default setting for everything in Google Drive (Select ‘Stream files’ in the settings of Google Drive in your computer).
  2. I then created a folder ‘Logseq’ in Google Drive. Open Logseq and create a new graph, selecting that folder.
  3. Then in the pc file explorer I went to the folder ‘Logseq’ inside the local Google Drive folder, right-click that folder, select ‘choose more options’, and then select ‘Offline access’. That folder is now mirrored permanently, meaning it stays available when offline.

Note:

This allows you to use the google drive folder on multiple devices. Be sure to get online with one device before you use another device, otherwise there may be sync conflicts. However, Logseq has a setting that stores both versions of conflicting Logseq files, so nothing is really lost, but you need to notice these files, I accidentally discovered them when looking in the Logseq folders.

It also works when you leave Google Drive at streaming only, when online.
However, if Google Drive detects no folder/file that is set as ‘Ofline access’, when offline it will disable the Google Drive virtual hard drive in your computer ‘Google Drive (G)’ and Logseq will complain that the graph has disappeared.

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