Backup while on the road

Hi - We are currently in the middle of a two year trip using external drives to backup our photos from a laptop.

I'm taking two copies of everything to the drives and it can easily become messy getting the two copies out of sync.

Anyone have a method to right to both drives at once or keep them in syc? I'm using a Macbook Pro.

I'm not a "mac" person by there may be some guidance at http://apple.stackexch​ange.com …ts-of-two-external-drives.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a great mac based tool to sync drives. I've used it for probably over a decade.

Edit: I would keep a primary drive to edit/work from, and then sync to a dedicated back up that only is written to when syncing.

At home I use ChronoSync. I use it fairly manually but it works well. For normal backups, I use Time Machine. For photos, I have a separate drive for my photos and use a specific "Scheduled Sync" to backup the photo drive to a separate backup drive. I doubt you can write to two drives at once, but you should be able to have two "Scheduled Syncs" to your two drives that you can run manually whenever you want.

I hope your trip is fun!!!!!

Why not simply use a RAID 1 with two drives, one mirroring the other?! The purpose is simply data redundancy until you get home and use your usual RAW convertor/postprocessi​ng JPG output, right?!

Wilt wrote in post #18165275
Why not simply use a RAID 1 with two drives, one mirroring the other?! The purpose is simply data redundancy until you get home and use your usual RAW convertor/postprocessi​ng JPG output, right?!

I think a RAID drive will automatically replicate corruption, accidental deletions, and malware...

I'm doing more than storage, I'm using it for processing photos as well seeing we are on the road for quite some time.


RAID1 - I'm assuming this can only be done using a server that is wall powered? We are using two USB powered external hard drives as we are travelling in a truck camper and run everything off 12 volts.

I have used the free program FreeFileSync on my Mac laptop to keep my backup disks synchronized for a number of years. It has always worked well for me and the user interface is easy to understand. I have three copies, my working disk, and two backups of that disk. Using this program all my new files as well as any files that changed get written over to my backup.

bpalermini wrote in post #18165555
I have used the free program FreeFileSync on my Mac laptop to keep my backup disks synchronized for a number of years. It has always worked well for me and the user interface is easy to understand. I have three copies, my working disk, and two backups of that disk. Using this program all my new files as well as any files that changed get written over to my backup.

Yes, I'm another FreeFileSync user, using it in Win 10, and I agree it is an excellent program for syncing and backing up. Couldn't live without it actually, for managing massive numbers of files.

One benefit to Carbon Copy Cloner is that it can make a bootable back up of the start-up disk the computer is currently using ... something that IMO is an essential part of a back up plan.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #18166271
One benefit to Carbon Copy Cloner is that it can make a bootable back up of the start-up disk the computer is currently using ... something that IMO is an essential part of a back up plan.

This is a built in capability of Windows 7 or later, the ability to make a System Image copy of the system harddrive. I have used it for years, and it has rescued me from a failed internal harddrive in my desktop computer, and it has rescued me from virus software that loaded onto the system harddrive some time after I had made a System Image of a virus-free system.

Yup, Mac has Time Machine built-in that does the same, but the extra features of CCC are worth it to me. The fact that I've used it for so long, and everything is "under one roof" keeps me coming back.

Actually, Time Machine might be able to just dupe one disk to another, but the only time I used it I found it clunky and unfamiliar. So I quickly went back to CCC