Thank you for your responses.
That is why I strongly suggest the original version of any file never be overwritten. Store at least two copies of it. Then, any new versions with a version number or similar attached can be stored under a new name.
Agree'd, and that is similar to what I do now just in an unorganized fashion. NEF's get copied to a working drive and an external backup drive so there are multiple copies of the originals. I use Photoshop and Lightroom for editing so any Lightroom adjustments get stored in the Lightroom catalog which is set for weekly backup and also saved externally periodically. It's the photos that get exported from Lightroom to Photoshop and added to the folder of originals for further editing, TIFFs for example, that are slipping through the cracks. A recent hard drive failure brought this oversight to my attention. I had backups of the NEFs but not the edited TIFFs. So I am looking for a streamlined way to keep the TIFFs backed up as well.
It's worth mentioning that sync/mirror and backup are different things. With sync, you usually don't have versioning, which means that if a file gets corrupted and then sync'ed, you'll simply end up with 2 corrupted files. Just earlier today, I helped a friend setup a proper backup of her documents. She was using Dropbox for "backup".
Before anyone can properly suggest an improved backup process, you need to tell us what OS and software you're using.
Of course, my fault. OS is Windows 10, photo editing software as mentioned above is Lightroom & Photoshop. So what might be a good solution to avoiding syncing potential corrupted files?
I love and use Beyond Compare to mirror any internals to external twins
PS. if you only have small amouts of Gigabytes you might consider storing TIFFs and PSDs in the cloud instead
of physical storage.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check into Beyond Compare. I have larger amounts of gigabytes so cloud storage is not practical though I do plan to put a smaller collection of 'portfolio' level files there as well.