How do I set up 2 external hard drives to automatically backup new files?

Mr.Noisy wrote in post #15680996
I couldnt agree more, hence using the Drobo to house the original RAW files, too many people read/write about all this,and never use it,
ive used raid systems for a while now, and they are so much easier than having several hdd's lying around and the time it takes copying files back and forth,the mirrored raid simplifies the whole deal, and it works well with lightroom, as for accidental deletion, thats no problem, as the orignal RAW files are on the Drobo and they are also copied to DVD in secure file storage.I dont keep any RAW files on my Mac Pro at all, everything is in my storage systems and I sleep soundly knowing there are several copies of my files without all the headache using cloning apps, and if a drive fails, so what, change it, the raid will rebuild itself and everything will carry on as normal. The Drobo houses 5 hdd's all 3tb so there is plenty of space.

So you keep two copies. One copy on the Drobo and one on DVD?

When the Drobo fails, you'll have to hope that you don't get any read errors on all your DVD...

Do fix at least one more HDD copy of your files. Right now, you seem to be on a collision course with a very big freight train. And it's gonna hurt.

I agree with pwm2 that DVDs are not the best method for backing up anything these days, especially with the low cost of large volume internal and external hard drives.

I forgot to mention that my Lightroom catalog and pictures are kept on my Toshiba external drive. That way I can take it with me and connect it to my laptop. I can also connect it to my home desktop, which I sometime do to process pictures. By keeping the catalog and pictures on an external hard drive, I always have access to my most current Lightroom files regardless of the computer that I use.

As an IT guy by profession, I'm a little anal when it comes to backups and disaster recover. I've been in the business for over 40 years, so I have first hand experience on how important it is. So, I use the ReadyNAS for disaster recovery / backup. And I do use the cloud to back up electronic copies of all of my purchased and downloaded software and the "My Documents" folders on all of our home computers (two desktops and 3 laptops). I do not backup the OS or any other system files or pictures to the cloud. Instead, I have a fireproof safe in which I keep a hard drive with my electronic music and pictures, and original passports, birth certificates, etc.

The moral of this story is, it does no good to have RAID, mirrored drives, backups, etc. if your house burns down and you don't have copies of what's important to you stored somewhere else.

I use syncback.

Lightroom raws go to two different NAS drives
processed jpegs go to NAS for presentation and to one external
processed jpegs also go to box.net 50GB free storage.

might revise in the future

pwm2 wrote in post #15681061
So you keep two copies. One copy on the Drobo and one on DVD?

When the Drobo fails, you'll have to hope that you don't get any read errors on all your DVD...

Do fix at least one more HDD copy of your files. Right now, you seem to be on a collision course with a very big freight train. And it's gonna hurt.

there are actually 4 copies of my files, 1 on the external raid for Lightroom, 1 on the drobo and then 2 copies on 2 dvd's of each project. I import my files to the Drobo from memory card via Lightroom creating the folders of original RAWs then add those to lightroom collections where lightroom stores its catologues on the external raid, and each project for now goes on 2 dvd's (plus another copy on my online hosting service for client access)
eventually there will be two 5 hdd Drobos in place.

Syncback is one option, I find it a great utility. Easy for a simple solution, however, a better option might be

"Mirror Folder" <<<-- link

Mirror Folder can be set up to essentially behave like a software RAID, but as the name implies, it does the mirroring to the folders you specify, not the entire drive. (It can do drives as well if desired)

It's actually a fantastic tool for medium scale network back up as well. It does real time mirroring as well as scheduled archival back up to compressed zip file. ie: if you edit something and find you over wrote something you did not want to, you can dig into the archive and get the older version last time it was archived.