Drupal Backup and Migrate - how to (in progress)

So, I have a drupal website. I'd like to write down the process of backing up and then restoring upon a complete failure.

So, to backup just use the default backup and set to download. Save these somewhere safe. Just to be safe I also did the same for Public Files Directory and Private Files Directory.

I guess thats the easy part. For the next part I've found it hard to find any documentation on restoring from a complete failure. Here's what I have found:

http://www.anexusit.com/blog/how-restore-backup-migrate-file-using-drush
http://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/40490/how-to-restore-a-site-from-a-backup-done-with-backup-and-migrate-module-using-dr

Both are related to drush which is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal.

My best guess for restore is to install drupal, install drush and run the restore command line.

If you also lose files, then you have to make sure you have backup of all files as well.

I think what I'd really like is the backup utility used with Joomla, Akeeba. This is much easier. I don't even think you need to install Joomla to reinstall. And it backs up all files. There must be a reason it isn't as easy. Oh well.

iPad backup and restore confusion

So, originally I made one ipad work perfectly, backed it up using iTunes and then restored all the ipads using this backup. Over time, more backups have been made of numorous ipads and confusion has sunk in. I'm using this post to document which iPad backup I'm currently restoring from. So, for now, I will use:

iPad 11848 backed up on 7th Sept 2012.

iTunes iPad backup location

I've noticed my Library folder get immensely large. I looked into it with OmnDiskSweeper (now that WhatSize has decided to charge) and found nearly 800MB (not much nowadays but too much for this as far as ICT Services goes) was taken up with iPad backups:

/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

I thought the easiest solution was to move it to the local scratch disk and symbolically link it. Heres the exact command I used to create the symbolic link:


ln -s /Volumes/Scratch\ Disk/Stephen/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup /Network/Servers/appleton.chesterfield.ac.uk/home2\$/LeachS/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync 

Seems to have done the trick.

I also noticed another folder taking up a lot of disk space whenever I tried to do a software update for the iPads:

/Volumes/Scratch\ Disk/Stephen/Library/iTunes/iPad Software Updates/

I decided to move the whole /Library/iTunes folder across. Here's the command I used to create a symbolic link:

ln -s /Volumes/Scratch\ Disk/Stephen/Library/iTunes /Network/Servers/appleton.chesterfield.ac.uk/home2\$/LeachS/Library