Gear Talk > Processing & Publication

Backup methods

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charlie:
My back up process is a mess.

My working library of photos are stored on internal hard drives and then I have external hard drives that I manually transfer files to so all of my NEF files are backed up shorlty after a shoot. Problem with this is when I edit a file some time later the TIFF/PSD files are not backed up unless I go back and find them to transfer them over or just transfer the whole folder over select 'do not overwrite duplicates'. This method is cumbersome and frustrating.

In the short term I'm looking for a software that can keep track of new files (the edited TIFF/PSD) and copy only those to my external hard drives. Any suggestions there?

Long term, there has got to be way than this. How do you do it?

I'm sure this topic has been beat to death but I haven't seen it here(?)

Bjørn Rørslett:
Lots of "sync" software available. The salient point is to ensure there are originals that never will be overwritten. And that they exist in independent locations.

pluton:
I am a small operator compared to the working professionals here.
Here's my very simple system.
 I export(output) "finished" files--JPEGs and TIFFs--to an existing or newly created folder on a certain hard drive, which we'll label #1 drive. 
Then I employ cloning software to copy the entire contents of that #1 drive onto clone drive #2.  Then, the #1 drive is itself cloned to a #3 clone drive.
The cloning software goes through the entire master drive, and actively copies only those files that have been added or changed.
As long as I maintain the #1 drive the way I want it, all of it's contents are smoothly copied/updated to the clone drives.
The cloning software can be set to always be running and to clone new data immediately onto the clone drives.  I do it manually, since I don't have very much to keep track of.
Tell me if this doesn't make sense...

charlie:
Makes perfect sense, What cloning software are you using?

Frank Fremerey:
I love and use Beyond Compare to mirror any internals to external twins

After a while I make another copy that goes to external storage.

Any deposit in External will be occupied by review and update.

After a longer while I buy bigger disks and copy historical drives to these.

The small 1TB and 2TBs are then reused for daily Backup.

PS. if you only have small amouts of Gigabytes you might consider storing TIFFs and PSDs in the cloud instead
of physical storage. I am a bit oldfashiond although I know media based backup is less safe than backup abstracted
from media.

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