Back up your computer to Drime with Duplicati

Duplicati is a free, open-source backup program for Windows, macOS, Linux and Synology. Since its stable version 2.4, it can save your backups in Drime: choose Drime Cloud as the backup destination and connect it with a Drime API token.

Duplicati compresses and encrypts your files into backup volumes before sending them. In Drime you see those volumes, not your original files: you browse and restore your files with Duplicati.

Duplicati is developed by its own team: for help with the program itself, see the Duplicati documentation.

#What you need

• Duplicati 2.4 or later, installed on the computer to back up. See Duplicati's installation page.

• A Drime account with enough free storage for your backups.

• A Drime API token, created in the next section.

#Create an API token

1. In the Drime web app, click your avatar, then Settings > Developers.

2. In API access tokens, click Create token.

3. Name the token after the computer it backs up, and keep the All permission.

   Duplicati must be able to upload, list and delete its backup volumes. A Read Only token cannot back up.

   

4. Click Create, copy the token, then click Done.

   The token is shown only once. Paste it into Duplicati right away, or store it in a password manager.

   

All the token options are in Create an API token.

#Set Drime as the backup destination

These steps follow the Duplicati documentation. Duplicati's screens may change between versions.

1. In Duplicati, add a new backup, or edit an existing one.

2. On the destination step, choose Drime Cloud as the storage type.

3. Enter a path for the backup, for example Backups/Laptop.

   Use a folder of its own for each backup, so that two backups never share the same folder.

4. Paste your Drime API token in the token field.

5. Test the connection if Duplicati offers it, then finish setting up the backup and run it.

By default the backup goes to your own files (your personal workspace, workspace-id 0). Duplicati's advanced option workspace-id targets a workspace instead.

#What you see in Drime

After the first backup, the folder you chose contains Duplicati's backup volumes: compressed, encrypted files with names generated by Duplicati.

• Do not open, rename, move or delete these files in Drime: Duplicati needs all of them to restore your backup.

• They count toward your Drime storage, like any other file.

• When Duplicati removes old volumes, they are deleted permanently by default. With the advanced option soft-delete turned on, they go to the Drime Trash instead, where they still count toward your storage while they are there.

#Restore your files

Restore with Duplicati: it reads the backup volumes from Drime and rebuilds your files. To restore on another computer, give Duplicati the same destination path and an API token. The restore steps are in Duplicati's own documentation.

Downloading the volumes from Drime does not give you your files back: only Duplicati can read them.

#Use the command line

Duplicati's command-line version addresses Drime with a URL of this form:

drimecloud://<folder>/<subfolder>?api-token=YOUR_API_TOKEN

The advanced options workspace-id, soft-delete, page-size and api-url can be added to the URL. See the Duplicati documentation for their details.

#If it doesn't work

#Next steps

• Create an API token

• Rclone, Drime CLI and WebDAV

• Back up a Synology NAS to Drime with rclone

• Back up folders from your computer with Drime Desktop