Automated Encrypted Backups to Cloud and FTP

The best backup is the one that runs without you remembering. The second-best is one that’s encrypted, so a compromised cloud account or a leaked external drive doesn’t become a second incident on top of the first. FTPie does both: a scheduler that runs on its own, AES-256 encryption before anything leaves your machine, and destination flexibility that doesn’t tie you to a single cloud provider.

This page covers the Auto Backups feature — what it does, how to set it up, and the decisions worth thinking about (schedule, encryption, retention) when you’re planning an automated backup job.

What FTPie Auto Backups actually does

FTPie is a Windows desktop app that already connects to 10+ storage services — Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, pCloud, Box, Mega, plus FTP, SFTP, FTPS, WebDAV, and self-hosted options like NextCloud. Auto Backups piggybacks on those connections: you pick a source folder, pick a destination among any of those services, configure schedule/encryption/retention, and it runs.

• Source: any local folder on your PC, a network share, or another connected storage (you can back up one cloud to another)
• Destination: any connected storage — cloud, FTP/SFTP server, NAS, self-hosted cloud
• Compression: configurable levels trading speed against archive size
• Encryption: plain password, 128-bit AES, or 256-bit AES
• Schedule: daily, weekly (specific days), custom intervals, or manual-only
• Retention: auto-cleanup by number of days or number of versions

Why encrypt the backup itself?

Cloud providers already encrypt data at rest and in transit. That’s not the same thing as end-to-end encryption. When the provider holds the keys, a provider-side breach, a compromised account, or a court order can all expose the contents. Client-side AES-256 encryption means the archive is ciphertext from the moment it leaves your PC. Whoever ends up with a copy — a hacked Dropbox account, a stolen external drive, a curious admin at your hosting provider — sees nothing without the password.

FTPie encrypts the archive locally before uploading. The password is never sent to the cloud provider; you hold it, and you need it to restore.

Setting up an auto backup (3 steps)

The Auto Backups feature uses a three-step wizard.

1. Pick source and destination. Source is the folder you’re backing up — typically a local project folder, Documents, a photo library, or a remote server directory. Destination is any storage you’ve connected in FTPie.
2. Configure.
   • Compression level (higher = smaller archive, slower CPU)
   • Encryption (pick AES-256 unless you have a reason not to) and password
   • Schedule: daily at 2am, every Sunday, every 6 hours — whatever matches how often the source changes
   • Missed run policy: skip, run immediately on wake, or wait for the next schedule
   • Retention: keep the last 30 days, or the last 7 versions
3. Save and activate. The job shows up in the backup list with its next scheduled run.

Picking a destination

The “where to back up” question is worth thinking about for 30 seconds before you pick.

For something critical, the convention is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of the data, two different media, one off-site. FTPie makes it easy to run two backup jobs with the same source and two different destinations — e.g. one to a NAS nightly, one to cloud weekly.

Compression and retention in practice

Compression is integrated — the backup is stored as a compressed archive, optionally encrypted. For a typical mix of documents and code, expect 20–50% size reduction. Big media files (JPEG, MP4) don’t compress meaningfully, so don’t plan storage based on huge ratios if that’s your data.

Retention policies prevent the backup destination from growing forever:

• By days — “keep anything from the last 30 days”. Predictable disk usage if your data volume is stable.
• By versions — “keep the last 7 runs”. Simpler mental model; disk usage scales with backup size.

“I had a weekly backup running for two years and never thought about it until my laptop SSD died. Restored from last Sunday’s archive and lost six hours of work instead of two years.”

Managing running jobs

The Auto Backups panel shows all jobs with status, next run, last run, and a pause toggle. Each job has its own history — duration, transferred size, success/failure — plus detailed logs if something goes wrong. You can pause a job without losing its configuration, resume later, or delete jobs that are no longer needed.

If you close the app before a scheduled run, the missed-run policy decides what happens next time FTPie starts: skip the missed one, run it immediately, or wait for the next regular slot.

Answers to the usual questions

Related use cases and features

• Auto Backups feature page — full feature walkthrough.
• Integrated compression — how FTPie creates archives on remote storage.
• Transfer files between cloud accounts — one-off moves vs recurring backups.
• Deploy websites via SFTP — if you want to back up what you deploy, not just deploy it.
• Self-hosted cloud on Windows — NextCloud / ownCloud / SeaFile as a backup destination under your own control.
• Automate PC to cloud backups — detailed tutorial guide.