How to configure Backup4all to back-up to SFTP-To-Go

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Backup4all is as a comprehensive backup solution designed for safeguarding specific files, folders and even application settings. It’s capable of running full backups, differential backups (capturing all changes since the last full backup), incremental backups (encompassing changes since the last full, differential, or incremental backup) and mirror backups. As far as destinations, Backup4all has support for local, external, network, remote (FTP/SFTP) and Cloud (Google Drive & Cloud Storage, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Azure, BOX, Hidrive and 37+ S3 Compatible cloud destinations).

To ensure your data is safely protected, you should pick a remote or cloud destination. This way you can be sure nothing will happen to your backed up data even if your computer gets stolen or is physically destroyed.

Backing up to SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) offers several advantages when compared to traditional backup methods. Here are some reasons why you might choose to backup to SFTP:

  • Encryption. SFTP uses encryption to protect data during transfer, thus even if intercepted it can’t be cracked.
  • Integrity. SFTP transfers ensure data integrity by using corruption detection mechanisms.
  • Remote. Backing up your data to remote destinations (or cloud) is very useful especially for disaster recovery scenarios.

If you are already using a hosting provider, most will give you access to a SFTP account to access your storage. However, if you do not host a domain, you can use external SFTP providers such as SFTP To Go.

SFTP To Go is a Secure Cloud FTP as a Service. It provides managed cloud file transfer service with SFTP / FTPS / S3 / web file access designed for smooth and simple data transfer, integration, and sharing. This way it can be used to back-up data using Backup4all.

Here’s how you can configure Backup4all to back-up your data to SFTP To Go:

  1. Download and install Backup4all.
  2. Sign up for SFTP To Go’s free trial, and sign in with your email and password.
  3. In SFTP To Go, create a set of credentials for Backup4all to use. You can leave the username empty and get a long random one generated for you for extra security. Make sure to set its permissions to read/write.
  1. Open Backup4all and create a new backup job.
  1. Set backup destination: click Online and then select SFTP server.
  1. Next, copy the host name, username, and password from SFTP To Go’s dashboard. Make sure that the port is set to 22.
  1. Sources – select the files/folders or applications you’d like to backup
  2. Filters – use filters if you’d like to include or exclude certain files or folders
  3. Backup type – choose the backup type. Smart is recommended – it combines full, differential, and incremental backups with cleanup operations to make sure that your backups are efficient on the one hand, and on the other hand, that you’d be able to restore them no matter what happens.
  4. Schedule it – you can configure the backup to run automatically.
  5. Name your backup job, save it, and run it to verify that it runs correctly.

Backup4all will back up the sources you configured in the job into your SFTP To Go storage and also verify the backup so you can sit back and relax, knowing that your backups are safe!