Backup Strategy

Could you guys share your strategy for files backup? Do you use a stand-alone backup program to to save your photos on a separate drive, which creates a single backup file? Or do you just copy your files to a another drive using Copy command? Any advantage of one method over the other?

I have two internal huge drives for data...photos, docs, etc. I store them there with Copy and Paste from the CF cards. When traveling, I back up the cards to a laptop and a backup to the backup on a Hyperdrive, and upload one of them to the desktop on returning home.

I use small batch programs to backup everything on my hard-disk to a second internal hard-disk every day. I also have similar programs to backup everything to an external drive. I alternate between two external drives. Redundant, yes. Anal-compulsive, yes. Will I ever lose ANYTHING do a hard-disk crash, power outage or house fire. EXTREMELY UNLIKELY!

Your backup program can be as simple as:

C:
cd \
xcopy *.* /d /s /y e:\


Save that on your desktop with a .BAT extension. Double-click it whenever you want to backup. Done.

I use an Apple Time Capsule to back everything up once an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On top of that, I also have a hard drive that I store off-site and I do a complete back-up of my primary hard drive every 2-3 months, or more often if need be.

This has me covered pretty well for non-business use!

Bryan

I keep all RAW files on an internal HD and I copy its contents onto a backup external HD. I export all photos to full sized JPG and upload ALL of them to my smugmug account. Smugmug allows unlimited uploads, no storage limit, etc. can't upload RAW files though, only jpgs. So on smugmug, I have a folder called "Backup" which is hidden from the public and it has hundreds of thousands of jpgs.

So mostly everybody uses, in one form or another, just copy and paste, not a special backup format. Correct?

Lbsimon wrote in post #16850054
So mostly everybody uses, in one form or another, just copy and paste, not a special backup format. Correct?

Time Capsule (Apple users only) doesn't require copy and paste. Time Capsule automatically tracks any changes in the background to any of your files anywhere on your computer and then makes the changes to your backup drive automatically. In other words, backups are seamless and happen automatically with no input from the user.

Of course, many people use a PC and not an Apple. I'm sure there are plenty of excellent programs out there for PCs to manage backups, so perhaps someone else can chime in with a good solution for PCs.

As for my off-site back-up, yes, I just do a copy-n-paste since I'm only running a back-up on that hard drive every couple of months.

If you want (or require) a robust solution, then there are a lot of options out there for a RAID setup with multiple drives. If you invest in that route though, you really need to buy server-grade hard drives that are built to last since the drive will be operating 24/7. Also, even if you invest in a RAID system, you still need to have an off-site solution to protect yourself in the event of theft, fire, natural disaster, etc.

Bryan

With a copy/paste system you don't need any special software to recover your back-up. Just copy/paste in the reverse direction to retrieve lost/damaged files.

I use the freeware program FBackup, which has an option to simply copy the files without any proprietary compression. I have my data stored on an external hard drive, and perform automatically scheduled backups to a 2nd external drive. I also have a small, portable 3rd external drive that I will backup to manually and then disconnect from the PC. Finally, I use Crashplan as an offsite backup solution.

The above system gives me three local copies of all my data, plus a fourth offsite copy.

I have an internal drive with all my files. One folder is RAW with a subfolder by date and another folder is for exported images (jpeg, tiff, psd,) with a matching folder structure so I can always easily find the RAW file for an image when needed.

I use Microsoft's free SyncToy to sync to an external drive.

Then I use "just cloud" for offsite backup as well.

When I get home from shooting,

I download the memory cards to drive #1.
From there I create a folder YEARMONTHDAY_event and dump the pix to that.
then I cull the photos for crap OOF or blatantly bad.
Then I copy that folder to 2 external backups.

and only after the 2 copies are completed do I reformat the cards in camera ONLY.

---

If I'm traveling, I bring my laptop + external backup.

I shoot, make the folders, download to laptop and copy to backup.
I don't format the cards until I get home, which has meant buying MANY cards to accommodate trips and shooting conservatively when necessary.

then when home, and only after the 2 copies are completed do I reformat the cards in camera ONLY.

I use crashplan for local back-up of all images/lightroom catalog. I also upload full-sized jpgs to a separate Flickr account just for archiving the full-sized jpgs.

I also have archived offsite back up (external hard drives at my office) that are updated every month. I just copy and paste each months images/raws/LR catalog to a portable HD and paste that to the ExtHD at work. I have three extHDs at work. Two archives of older images and one that is updated/added to every month.

The cheapest offsite storage I know of right now is amazon glacier at .01 per gig per month. My synology nas has a plug in that I installed that can keep my glacier account updated. I also periodically make a copy on my nas onto a USB external drive and keep that off site.

Let me add that you better make sure you are backing up everything you want AND that you test your restore.

I just had a main drive melt down. I back up My Docs every couple of days, but I missed two things that were stored outside the My Docs folder, including my main Light Room Catalog. No pictures lost and my workflow is pretty minimal, so it isn't a big deal for me.

Also, think about your bare metal restore process. Software Installers? License keys? TESTED Recovery drive?

If you are running windows, grab SyncToy from Microsoft.

It allows you to make pairs, the source folder and the destination folder.

You have 3 types of actions:
synch- files copies each way, deletes and updates go both ways
echo- files on left are copied or updated to the right, not both ways
contribute-renames copied left to right, no deletions

You can have many folder pairs and run them one at a time or all at once.

It's simple and has many options. I just fire it up and copy everything to another drive. It checks for updates and new files then copies everything.