Backup software

[alan_markowitz1]

Hi everyone,

Like most of you, I take hundreds of photos monthly and I was just wondering

what program most of you use to backup all those precious files. Any

recommendations?

Thanks.

[jim_mcdonald1]

Hi Alan

I use nothing special. Usual pattern is to set up a new folder with date and subject. In that I set up two folders, one entitled Source and the other Worked. I put the RAW files from the camera into the Source folder and and processed ones into the Worked one. I back up all of the photo folders on to an external drive once a week or more often if there's anything especially important. I burn them all to DVDs when there's enough to near fill one. Bear in mind I'm only an enthusiastic amateur, I'm sure those better versed will have far more sophisticated answers. Good luck, Jim

[saltcod]

I've been looking for a back solution too, but haven't found it. From what I can gather, Macs have a backup program but windows does not. There are software packages that come with external harddrives - but as I've found, they really aren't good. I found that the good 'ol drag and drop is about as effective as it gets.

 

Do write back if you find one!

[h._p.]

I use Prosoft's Data Backup on the Mac and DriveImage 7 on Windows. I prefer the Prosoft offering because it just does a copy whereas DriveImage locks your backup into a proprietory format.

[michael_ziegler2]

I set up a network at home and hold all my converted files on the server, my raw files reside on my working PC. I back up the server pictures onto an Iomega external drive which is also part of the network by just drag and drop methods.

[mendel_leisk]

xxcopy

[keith_van_hulle1]

Terry, almost all Windows O/S's come with a built-in backup program. On XP, it's usually under Accesories\System Tools.

[jake_v]

Ahhh... managing the netowrk & servers on a medium sized business, plus our photography business, I may be overkill but here goes:

 

First off, we never delete a CF card until is has been copied to two separate locations.

 

One copy goes to our workstation, which has two mirrored hard drives for the data portion.

 

The second copy goes to an "unraid" server, which contains a current backup of whatever is on the workstation's data drive. We do this by running a program called "vice versa pro", which lets us update & copy files between locations easily. Most importantly, it checks the timestamp and filesize before copying and also verifies the files afterwards.

 

Copy and paste thru windows leaves you no verification that the files copied bit for bit... plus it's a huge hassle if somehow things get stopped in the middle of a "backup".

 

As far as the equipment on the "unraid" server goes... It consists of 12 hard drives, with one being a parity drive and the remaining 11 being data drives. The one parity drive makes it possible to replace ANY of the 11 drives, should they fail... but only if ONE drive fails. If two drives fail... well, it's better than a true RAID system, in that only the drives that failed lose data, instead of a RAID5's complete loss of data on all drives.

 

The "unraid" server has 1 parity drive, 2 drives dedicated to current copies of whatever is on the workstation, and the remaining drives being older versions of backups, and other types of data.

 

Couple all that with our rotating external hard drives that get put in fireproof safes offsite... and smugmug having jpg copies of all our files... I think we have everything covered pretty well, even without DVD/CD backups (which I find to be worthless a few years down the road).

 

For info on unraid, check out http://www.lime-technology.com/

[james_duncan5]

Personally, I'd stay away from that unRAID setup and stick with proven technology. RAID5 with a hot spare and regular tested backup and recovery procedures is more than sufficient, and stays away from proprietary messes like this. For the truly technical, throw in multiple arrays and/or a volume management system and you've got all the benefits of this unRAID setup with none of the (significant) drawbacks.

 

To answer the original poster, somebody mentioned NTbackup (assuming you're using windows). That's probably fine for most people's needs - just make sure you are backing up to a different medium than the originals (DVDs, a NAS device of some sort or just an external USB harddrive). It can be configured to schedule backups regularly using a variety of different policies (full, incremental, etc.)

 

Whatever you do, the critical thing here is to make sure your backups are not on the same media as the originals, and preferably moved somewhere offsite periodically. Depending on how serious you are about this, you might consider a safe deposit box and locking up some DVDs a couple of times a year. A fire in your house could very easily wipe out the originals and the backups at the same time.

 

I have a much more complicated setup but well outside the scope of this discussion. Can't speak to Mac solutions as I don't currently use that platform.

[norm_h]

Given how cheap hard disk space is these days, I don't think DVDs are worth the trouble. In my little home network, every valuable piece of data is located on a little server PC. Everything gets mirrored to a second external HD on a daily basis. I also have another external drive with mirrored data, that I planned to bring to work (to have the backup in different physical location), but so far it's still sitting on my desk.

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Anyway, the software I use for mirroring and all other backup tasks is SyncBack SE. The non-SE version is freeware and it is still one of the most powerful and flexible backup programs, I've come accross (I also used it at work for backup of 300000 microscope images that were aquired within half a year).

[alan_markowitz1]

Thanks all for the answer. I did some research of my own and came across a Microsoft software that is a free download. Seems pretty descent, although I haven't used it yet, so judge for yourself. Here's the link: (or go to MS website and search for SYNCTOY)

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

[jake_v]

James Duncan:

 

Unraid is linux based. All the data is on ReiserFS... which means everything is readable in a linux (or windows if you have the tool to recognize the FS) machine.

 

The only thing proprietary is the software that adds a parity disk, which backs up any other disks you have on the system.

 

Raid 5 is by a long shot closer to "proprietary". I've dealt with systems doing this, and they are great. But try and move your multiple disks from a raid5 system to somewhere else once your raid card fails... good luck, especially if you want to do this in a timely manner.

 

OTOH, it's way overkill for most picture takers... but then, so is raid5.

[tom_swanson]

Sync toy synced about 40GB of my images to oblivion. Syncback is much nicer software.

[rickvandenberg]

At home, images are dumped to a mirrored drive. Every night, or on command, I use a windows port of rsync to syncronize my entire photo storage tree to a server at my office. The office backup system then takes care of the backups of those.

 

At any given time, there are about 10 copies of the images, either directly accessible or in off-line backups.

 

Whatever you use, the key is redundancy.

[godfrey]

I use a pair of 500G external firewire drives as my working backup system, and another 400G

drive to back up my user accounts for other kinds of files. I run Mac OS X.

 

ChronoSync from Econ Technologies makes the job of reliably syncing the photo work to the

backup system drives without need for incremental versions. I use Apple's Backup utility to

do incremental backups of the rest of my data.

 

Godfrey

[photoguy365_elephant]

I have opted for the most confortable and reliable method. Find a good online backup service that will do all the work automatically for you. Companies like <a href="http://www.mozy.com/">http://www.mozy.com/</a> for general backup or one that I use that is specifically for photographers is <a href="http://www.kabooza.com/">http://www.kabooza.com/</a>.