do not overlook this guys although having something like icloud dropbox google drive obsidian sync is 100 times better than nothing these are typically not backup solutions these are cloud syncing solutions ideally you want to have a cloud syncing solution for convenience and a backup solution for actual security most people have the cloud solution but fail to have an actual backup mistakes and accidents happen to the best of us and if you have no backup that's it for your notes by the end of this video you're going to have all the information to choose the best
cloud solution for your needs as well as a backup solution that works regardless of what cloud service you end up using we're first going to go over the differences between cloud syncing and actual backups after that we're going over what i believe are the best cloud solutions out there and this is not a one size fits all recommendation as it strongly depends on what operating systems you have so we're first going to go over my recommendations for an all apple workflow for an all windows and android workflow and a mixed workflow this is for those
of you that have for instance a windows machine and ios devices and lastly we're going over my favorite backup methods that are going to work regardless of what cloud solution you use and in the very end i'll show you my exact backup process it's crucial that we understand the difference between a cloud syncing solution and a backup solution in a cloud sync option your nodes live in that cloud servers for the most part the cloud syncing solution's only purpose is to sync your data across all your devices this is definitely better than simply having it
on your local machine because if something happens to your computer your notes still live elsewhere and you can access them on a device that you own however if you delete a note on one of your devices that note also gets deleted across all your devices and if you only notice that after a while and depending on what cloud provider you have these can be very difficult to retrieve if not done right and possible a lot of people use their cloud provider as a backup and as we'll see in the later parts of this video yeah
it can be used as a backup but on its own it's simply a syncing mechanism a backup on the other hand is not connected to your working vault your backup can be offline or online it can even be in a cloud provider so long as it lives independently of your current working vault so that if you delete a note or even your entire vault your backup is still untouched all right so before we go over the different cloud options for different workflows a distinguishing factor that a lot of people place a lot of importance on
when choosing a cloud provider is file versioning file versioning refers to the option of going back in time to a date of your choosing and finding something in your vault that you might have altered or deleted this works very similar to time machine on mac devices i personally have never felt the need for this but i totally understand it if you do and if you do out of all the services that i'll be mentioning throughout this video obsidian and dropbox are the only ones that offer file versioning however none of these services on their own
offer a full backup which is what i'll be going over in the later parts of this video okay so let's start with an all apple workflow and if you're deep in the apple ecosystem as i am then really icloud is the option for you obsidian can use your available icloud space and seamlessly sync across all your devices to start using icloud to sync across all your devices all you need to do is move your vault into the obsidian folder inside icloud drive you can then open up your ipad for instance click on the obsidian app
and you should see your vault right away listed as an option the same goes for your phone and any other apple devices that you have it really doesn't get any simpler than that i've been using icloud to sync across all my devices and i must say the experience has been flawless for me however if file versioning is an absolute must for you then icloud is simply not going to cut it and you need to go with either dropbox or obsidian sync and if you already pay for dropbox you might as well use it but if
you don't then i recommend obsidian sync as it works beautifully as well all right so now for an all windows and android workflow if you have an android phone and tablet and a windows machine the good news is that you have a lot more options in here personally what i would go with is if you already have a cloud subscription of some kind such as dropbox onedrive google drive i would just go with that however if you're not paying for any particular cloud service then i recommend just going with google drive simply because it works
flawlessly and they give you 15 gigabytes for free which it's going to be enough for 99.9 percent of you i have about 2 000 notes in my vault a bunch of media videos pictures audio and my vault barely crosses the one gigabyte mark all you need to do is have a drive folder for the cloud service that you picked on your computer and place your obsidian vault inside of it not as seamless as icloud but pretty close nonetheless all right so now let's say you have ios mac windows android linux you have it all you
mix everything then if you can spare eight bucks a month i think you'll be very happy with obsidian sync to be fair obsidian sync is a little bit overpriced but you're helping the developers continue to maintain this awesome product and if you have the money to spare obscene sync works beautifully i've tried it have no complaints whatsoever there's one small catch to obsidian sync is that as far as i'm aware it only supports vaults up to 10 gigs in size but like i said before that's really not a problem for almost anyone there's another really
great way of having backups and revisioning together for free but it requires a lot more effort and a lot more technical skills it's out of the scope of this video and it's definitely not plug and play like the solutions i'm referring to here but if you are technically inclined and you have the time i highly recommend you checking out this video i'm putting in description below which is a video made by a fellow youtuber that explains how to do this very well okay so now let's look at actual backups and what i recommend people to
do is very simple actually 99 of people's vaults are typically very small almost everyone's vault is under a gig and very few people out there have a vault that's above 15 gigs a very simple and even free way to make sure that your vault is safe is to once a week or once a month depending on how often you upload to your vault simply copy your entire vault and paste it on another cloud provider or a physical drive google drive gives 15 gigs of free space and the vast majority of people don't even need 10
of that for their vault so again once a week or once a month you can simply copy and paste your entire vault into your google drive and that way you have a backup solution that's entirely free so if you use icloud or dropbox and you lose access to your vault for whatever reason it still lives on your google drive having your vault on a cloud provider as well as a backup on a different cloud provider is enough for 99 of people but if you're someone really cautious then the way to go is to have your
vault on a cloud provider and your backup offline if you wish to go that route all you need is a flash drive or a hard drive and i believe nowadays a 16 gig flash drive goes for about six or seven dollars on amazon so you can get one of those and once a week or once a month you can simply copy and paste your entire vault into your flash drive or your hard drive and place it somewhere safe then a week or a month comes by again and you do the same thing over and over
again although very simple it's not as straightforward as simply logging into your google account and copy and pasting your vault into your drive simply because with this method there's an actual physical component attached to it but if you want to have an offline copy of your vault this is the cheapest and best way to do it so now i'm going to show you how i back up my vault and before i show you let me tell you this is absolutely unnecessary and the only reason that i do this method is because i already own the
devices needed i use a network attached storage or nas for short and it automatically copies every single change that i make in my vault in real time even if it's just a single letter to a single note again this is completely necessary and you don't need any of this i only use it because i already owned a synology nas prior to even discovering obsidian i have a synology the s920 plus which i use for a bunch of different things if you're interested in getting a nas for yourself you really don't need anything like the ds
920 plus if you want a nas in your house to back up your vault and your phone your computer and all that there are far cheaper models that will do that job just fine and i'm going to link a few of those in the description for you to check out as a conclusion to this video i believe that every workflow will stand to benefit from a different cloud provider but i also believe that the best one out there is in fact obsidian sync if you are willing to spend the extra eight dollars a month which
is definitely not cheap but it is supporting the community and supports the developers to maintain this awesome product that we all love if you take anything out of this video is that cloud sync is not a backup and if you're anything like me you'd be devastated if you lost access to your vault so make sure to always have a backup all right so that's it for episode three in this series i hope you're enjoying them so far thanks for watching and i'll see you next one bye
