How do I back up photos on External Drive?

[Shane W]

I just purchased a Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 gig drive and am wondering how everyone copies thier photos to it. Any special software you reccomend? It came with WD Sync but that uses passwords and encrypts everything and wants to keep syncronizing everything. How have you set up your external drive for just photo backup? Do I delete and reformat it then just copy files with Windows? HELP!

Thanks in advance as I know someone will chime in with some tips!

Shane W

[Gold]

I haven't used it but would of thought that you could disable the passwords and encryption and just use the WD Sync software to keep your files organised and upto date.

[FlyingPhotog]

From an amateur standpoint, you can just manually copy and paste the images that are worth backing up.

From a Pro perspective, it gets more involved because you may be contractually obligated to maintain files for future use by clients or for legal reasons.

[jra]

I use a similar external HD for back up. I simply drag and drop.

[geoff5093]

SyncToy. It's a free program from Microsoft that can be used to backup only a certain folder (like the Pictures folder), and it only copies over new/modified files. That way if you have thousands of photos you don't have to wait hours for it to copy over an identical file that's already on the drive.

[D.C.]

+1 for synctoy from microsoft. The wife can even use it.

[Shane W]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I downloaded SyncToy and am running it now. Seems much easier to use than the supplied software from WD. Thanks again!

Shane

[renegade]

I use a free program called syncback. Its fully automated if you want. i.e. regular scheduled backups automatically.

[ChasP505]

One more for SyncToy. Version 2 (earlier version 1.4 is still circulating on the web).

[neil_g]

i went for allway sync over synctoy.. for reasons in this thread -> http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=577211&highlight=allway

[geoff5093]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I downloaded SyncToy and am running it now. Seems much easier to use than the supplied software from WD. Thanks again!

Shane
I completely formatted my WD hard drive when I got it to get rid of all the WD crap, and formatted it as NTFS.

[Paul J McCain]

What is the advantage to SyncToy over just dragging and dropping your photos when you DL from the camera?

[RNPoo7]

I use a similar external HD for back up. I simply drag and drop.

I do the same thing and I have the exact same hard drive as the OP

[RNPoo7]

What is the advantage to SyncToy over just dragging and dropping your photos when you DL from the camera?

I would like to know as well.

[davidcrebelxt]

What is the advantage to SyncToy over just dragging and dropping your photos when you DL from the camera?


Its automatic after you setup the folder pairs.
It looks for new and modified files too. Say, you edit a .jpg, or add metadata keywords into file header, or work with ACR and have .xmp sidecars... they all are copied over too. Or even the case you were in a rush or were lazy for awhile and hadn't manually copied some over.
It can keep the same folder structure you already have on disk with no effort. (This can be extremely handy when working with cataloging programs like Lightroom... its looking for those images in a specific location... in a HD catastrophe, you just reinstall OS and software, then put this folder structure back already in tact - exactly the way it was.)
You can set it to sync your pictures directory, but also Music, and any other important file locations.

[RNPoo7]

Its automatic after you setup the folder pairs.
It looks for new and modified files too. Say, you edit a .jpg, or add metadata keywords into file header, or work with ACR and have .xmp sidecars... they all are copied over too. Or even the case you were in a rush or were lazy for awhile and forgot to manually copy some over manually.
It can keep the same folder structure you already have on disk with no effort. (This can be extremely handy when working with cataloging programs like Lightroom... its looking for those images in a specific location... in a HD catastrophe, you just reinstall OS and software, then put this folder structure back already in tact - exactly the way it was.)
You can set it to sync your pictures directory, but also Music, and any other import file locations.

Wow that's pretty neat! I'll have to give it a try

[davidcrebelxt]

Just realized my first point may have been misleading... synctoy itself doesn't let you set up a schedule to run automatically.

This website tells you a way to do it in Vista or XP using task scheduler:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/01/01/schedule-synctoy-to-run-and-automatically-and-repetitively/

(However, I just run it once every couple weeks.)

[Sports_Dude]

I use 2 hot swappable drives that are rotated about every month. Is there any software that will recognize when I trade out drives and resave the new files to the swapped drive? Swapped drive will have data that is about 1 month old.

[Kronie]

I use second copy. It can be set up a million different ways and is very easy to use.
http://www.centered.com/
Have used it for a few years now and it works great.